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Wartime 
speeches 



I 

My a. the Ht. Hon. 



C. SM % P.C., K.C., M.L.A. 



"The speec **h our 

war aim ~ the 

future f 4 V Jiese 

three *s ik*e, in my ^.^ sely 

rela' A rest on the same o«ij,*j of 

ideW Whatever the causes and origins 
of the war, the continuous increasing 
pressure of this vast calamity on the 
human spirit has pushed to the front 
the basic ideas on which our western 
civilisation rests, and is silently bring- 
ing about a far - reaching change 
in our political and social outlook/* 

—From the Foreword. 



IDDER AND STOUGHTON 

DON TORONTO NEW YORK 



WAR -TIME SPEECHES 



WAR-TIME 
SPEECHES 



A COMPILATION OF PUBLIC UTTERANCES IN 
GREAT BRITAIN 

BY 

Lieut.-Gen. the Rt. Hon. J. C. SMUTS 

n .C, K.C, M.L.A. 

In connection \ • Session of the Imperial 

War Cabinet and --np, lal War Conference, 

1917 



HODDER AND STOUGHTON 
LONDON TORONTO NEW YORK 

MCMXVII 



SIT 

.St 



©CU tat 29 90 > 



AUG -4 1917 



FOREWORD 

I have been strongly urged to publish in 
pamphlet form some of the speeches which I have 
recently made in this country. To this I have 
finally agreed, in .^pite of their ephemeral character 
and their rough rfu&c!^$ed form. The fact is that 
these speeches were, ,£ab from very brief notes 
and that for their reproducli° n I am now depen- 
dent on the actual form «i which they were de- 
livered as reported in the Press, often in a very 
condensed form; indeed, some of my addresses 
were summarised to such an extent that their 
reconstruction from the reports has been found 
impossible. 

In spite of their form, however, a general unity 
of ideas runs through them all, which I hope has 
proved helpful and may in pamphlet form interest 
a wider circle. The speeches all deal either with 
our war aims or the British Empire or the future 
government of the world. These three subjects 
are, in my mind, closely related and rest on the 
same basis of ideas. Whatever the causes and 
origins of the war, the continuous increasing pres- 
sure of this vast calamity on the human spirit has 
pushed to the front the basic ideas on which our 



v i FOREWORD 

Western civilisation rests, and is silently bringing 
about a far-reaching change in our political and 
social outlook. 

The military aspects of the war so absorb our 
attention that we are apt to forget the still more 
important moral aspects, and to overlook the fact 
that the suffering of such multitudes is slowly but 
surely working a great psychological change, which 
will lead to results far beyond any that were con- 
templated at the beginning of the war. However 
hard we are striving for victory — and victory ^ to 
my mind is essential for a well-ordered, lasting 
p eace — we should not aim merely at a _ military 
victory, but still more at su fk a imoral victory as 
will become a steadfast b; I for thV new order of 
things. This could b doi- oy n iaking people 
realise the fundamental ^eals w *sch underlie our 
essential war aims. If we are to achieve the per- 
manent destruction of that military Imperialism 
which has drifted from the past like a monstrous 
iceberg into our modern life, we must create a 
new temperature, a new atmosphere for Demo- 
cracy, and strengthen the forces of freedom and 
national government and self-development at the 
same time that we work for the free co-operation 
of the nations in future, in pursuing the common 
ideals of a peaceful civilisation. Military Im- 
perialism, more briefly called Prussianism, was one 
method to counteract the anarchy of the individual 
sovereign States of modern Europe — a very dis- 
astrous method. For it will have to be substituted 
a new method, based on a powerful and^ wide- 
spread public opinion, which will reconcile the 



FOREWORD vii 

individual freedom of States with co-operative 
machinery in the first instance for the preservation 
of peace, and later for securing other essential 
common aims of civilisation. The method of sub- 
jection by force will have to give way to the 
method of co-operation on the basis of freedom. 

This ideal of an organised free co-operative 
basis for the future Society of Nations, which would 
have appeared chimerical before the war, is so no 
longer, though many generations will elapse before 
it will be in full working order. The interesting 
point is that in the British Empire, which I prefer 
to call (from its principal constituent state) the 
British Commonwealth of Nations, this transition 
from the old legalistic idea of political sovereignty 
based on force, to the new social idea of constitu- 
tional freedom, based on consent, has been gradu- 
ally evolving for more than a century. And the 
elements of the future world Government, which 
will no longer rest on the Imperial ideas adopted 
from the Roman law, are already in operation in 
our Commonwealth of Nations and will rapidly 
develop in the near future. As the Roman ideas 
guided European civilisation for almost two 
thousand years, so the newer ideas embedded in 
the British constitutional and Colonial system may, 
when carried to their full development, guide the 
future civilisation for ages to come. But some 
development in the structure of our Common- 
wealth and the greater equalising of its constituent 
parts will be necessary before the British precedent 
could be fruitfully applied to the Society of 
Nations at large. 



vin FOREWORD 

That is roughly how the constitutional ideas 
underlying our Commonwealth seem to me to 
connect, on the one hand with the ideals for which 
we are fighting in this war, and on the other with 
the larger world order which will in future replace 
the chaos of our present international system. 

In the following speeches rough popular ex- 
pression is given to these ideas. My hope is that 
these ideas will more and more mark the goal at 
which we are consciously aiming through this 
tragedy of sorrow, and will give us that inner 
strength and resolution which will enable the 
Allied Democracies to hold on till victory is 
achieved. We shall then fight on, not in a dull, 
desperate spirit for low material ends, but in a 
conscious, joyous co-operation with the spiritual 
forces of progress towards a better future for man. 

J. C. Smuts. 
London, 
31st May, 1917 



PUBLISHERS' NOTE. 

The Publishers acknowledge with thanks the 
kindness of the Proprietors of The Times, The 
Scotsman, and The Cambridge Daily News in 
giving permission to make use of the reports of 
General Smuts' speeches which have appeared in 
their columns. 



CONTENTS 



THE 



The War and Empire Problems . 

The Future Constitutional Relations in 
Empire 

The British Commonwealth of Nations 
The War and the Empire 

Youth and Honour 

A League of Nations 

Freedom 

The Future of South and Central Africa 

4 

Russia — The Need of Discipline and Organi 
sation 

Democracy and the War 



PAGE 

3 



13 

25 
41 

49 

55 

7i 

79 

97 
109 



THE WAR AND EMPIRE PROBLEMS 



A Speech delivered by General Smuts at the Luncheon 
given by the Empire Parliamentary Association to the 
members of the Imperial War Cabinet, at the House of 
Commons, April 2nd, 1917. 

The Toast of " The Oversea Ministers was proposed 
by the Rt. Hon. Walter Long, M.P., Secretary _ of State 
for the Colonies, and was responded to by Sir Robert 
Borden and General Smuts. 



THE WAR AND EMPIRE PROBLEMS 

I am extremely grateful to you for the recep- 
tion you have given me. I feel very much 
embarrassed to-day in following two such speakers 

I feei L £?S L * nd the Prime Minister of Canada, 
putting her best°iS S1 ? n that South Afri ca is not 
General Botha was here Wa ! d ; I couId wish th ^t 
with Sir Robert Borden in reply to w b ^ br *cketed 
the Dominions, but unfortunately he couiu° ast of 
here He is bearing a burden in South Africa 
which no other man can bear, and it is a misfor- 
tune in a certain sense that I have to take the 
place of my right hon. friend. 

We feel profoundly grateful to you, Mr. Long, 
tor the references you have made to the effort of 
the Dominions in this war. No doubt, it is a great 
effort. But I must frankly confess that what has 
impressed me far more profoundly in this war is 
the effort and the spirit of the United Kingdom. 

When we consider that this nation was not 
organised on a military basis, that it was a nation 
built on peace institutions and founded on a com- 
mercial basis, and not intended for such a crisis 
as has overwhelmed the world now, I say that the 
effort that has been made by this nation is one to 
which it is almost impossible to do proper justice 



B 2 



4 WAR-TIME SPEECHES 

That effort, and the spirit which is even greater 
than the effort, are the pledge of certain success 
in the future. I am as sure as I can be of any- 
thing that this spirit which the British nation has 
developed is such that all will be well in the end, 
however hard it may be before the end comes. 

With regard to the Dominions, we have listened 
to the very eloquent and wise speech which Sir 
Robert Borden has made, and it is certainly a mar- 
vellous effort which has been made by the 
Dominions. Is it not a wonderful thin £ a £effort 
Dominion of Canada by ; herself h^ Q ^ made by 
almost equal, if not qui^^p Here you have 
Great Britain jn^ q£ the Empke whkh has raised 

^ °Y!Tiaif a million men in the course of this 
war. I am credibly informed that, in proportion 
to her population, the effort of Australia has been 
almost more magnificent. As regards the Empire 
of India I cannot speak with authority, but I can 
say, as one who has commanded thousands of 
Indian troops in one of our campaigns, that I never 
wish to command more loyal, braver, and better 
troops. The Indian troops who are now breaking 
up the Turkish Empire in Mesopotamia are 
making a contribution to the war which should 
never be forgotten. New Zealand, the most 
British of all the Dominions, has made a mag- 
nificent effort; with a small population of a little 
more than a million, she has raised approximately 
100,000 men. This is an effort of which we might 
all well be proud. The same applies to Newfound- 
land. 



THE WAR AND EMPIRE PROBLEMS 5 

What can I modestly say about South Africa? 
We started this war with an internal convulsion 
in the country. Unlike any other parts of the 
Empire, we first had to set our own house in order. 
That was done. We secured peace and quiet in 
South Africa, and to-day the German flag, except 
in a small and fever-ridden district, is not flying 
south of the equator. You have to remember — I 
do not want to be parochial, but the case of South 
i\irica is significant for our whole position "in this 
war — you must remember that, unlike the other 
Dominions, this work was done by a Dominion 
the majority of whose white population is not 
British, but Dutch. You have to remember that 
only fifteen years ago a very large portion of this 
population was locked in deadly conflict with the 
British Empire. And when you bear in mind these 
facts and see what has been achieved, I think you 
will agree with me that South Africa has done her 
share, and more than her share. 

How was this done ? Here I come to the wider 
issue. It was done because the Boer War of 1899- 
1902 was supplemented, was complemented, or 
compensated by one of the wisest political settle- 
ments ever made in the history of this nation. I 
hope that when in future you draw up a calendar of 
Empire-builders you will not forget the name of 
Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman. He was not 
either intellectually or politically a superman, but 
he was a wise man with profound feeling and pro- 
found political instinct, and he achieved a work 
in South Africa by one wise act of statesmanship 
which has already borne, and will continue to bear, 



6 WAR-TIME SPEECHES 

the most far-reaching results in the history of this 
Empire. 

This completed what was begun in the Boer 
War, and it switched South Africa again on to the 
right track and the British Empire again on to the 
right track, because, after all, the British Empire 
is not founded on might or force, but on moral 
principles — on principles of freedom, equality, and 
equity. It is these principles which we stand for 
to-day as an Empire in this mighty struggle. Our 
opponent, the German Empire, has never learned 
that lesson yet in her short history. She still be- 
lieves that might is right — that a military machine 
is sufficient to govern the world. She has not yet 
realised that ultimately all victories are moral and 
that even the political government of the world 
is a moral government. The fundamental issue in 
this struggle in which we are engaged to-day is that 
the government of the world is not military, and 
it cannot be brought about by a military machine, 
but by the principles of equity, justice, fairness, and 
equality, such as have built up this Empire. 

You see the effects of this already. Germany 
started enormously strong and preponderant in 
military strength over the world. What have we 
seen ? Simply because we have a just and good 
cause and simply because she has been trying to 
hack her way through in a military sense, one 
country after another has dropped away from her. 
Two of her own treaty nations have dropped away 
from her, and to-day, almost all over the world, 
you will find the nations coming together against 
her. America has not yet declared war. Nobody 



THE WAR AND EMPIRE PROBLEMS 7 

knows what America may do, but I say that if 
America does not go into this war to-day, she will 
go in to-morrow because the German attitude will 
force her sooner or later into open conflict. That 
is what Germany has achieved by the principle for 
which she is fighting. I am sure, if we continue 
to found our issue on those high principles that 
have actuated us so far through our history, the 
end is certain and Germany is already defeated. 
Morally and politically she is already defeated, and 
all that remains now is the final issue on the field 
of battle. 

I do not conceal from myself that the position 
is a grave one — that the Central Empires are an 
enormously strong military combination, and when 
I speak of ultimate victory I do not hide from 
myself that we have hard work in front of us and 
that there are difficult times ahead of us. There 
is no doubt, after the long time the war has lasted 
— almost three years — and the exhaustion which 
is overtaking Central Europe, that they cannot con- 
tinue much longer, and that by the autumn that 
is now before them they will probably make their 
maximum military effort. They are flouting the 
opinion of the world in a way they have never 
done before, and in a way which suggests that they 
must try hard at any cost to achieve some definite 
result this summer. 

As to the submarine campaign, I am fully con- 
vinced that that campaign is not going to settle 
this war. At the best it is, as it were, a raid on 
our wide Empire communications. The raids will 
be severe from time to time and will inconvenience 



8 WAR-TIME SPEECHES 

us very seriously, but they will not lead to our 
defeat. No mere raid on lines of communications 
ever yet led to the defeat of any army in the world. 
This summer, I think, we shall probably see the 
submarine effort on which Germany is relying fail 
in its intention, and then, earlier than many of us 
think, we shall hear of peace again. As Sir Robert 
Borden has assured us, this nation is not inspired 
by any vengeful feeling, by a desire to destroy the 
German nation. We are actuated by higher 
motives. We are not going to decline to a lower 
level of mere vengefulness and hatred, i am sure 
the nation will at the end make a wise settlement 
not only in its own interests, but in the interests 
of the whole of Europe. 

As to the future constitution of the Empire, I 
do not wish to speak on that subject at any length. 
I do not think this is the time or that it is necessary 
to do so, but I think one word of caution should 
be expressed. A great deal of political thinking 
on this difficult and most important of all subjects 
has already been done in the United Kingdom, and 
a great literature is growing up around it. Let 
me give you one word of warning. In thinking 
of this matter, do not try to copy existing political 
institutions which have been evolved in the course 
of European development. The British Empire 
is a much larger and more diverse problem than 
anything we have seen hitherto; and the sort of 
Constitution we read about in books, the sort of 
political alphabet which has been elaborated in 
years gone by, does not apply and would not solve 
the problems of our future. We should not follow 



THE WAR AND EMPIRE PROBLEMS 9 

precedents, but make them. I feel sure that in the 
coming years, when this problem is in process of 
solution — because it will never be finally and per- 
fectly solved — you will find our political thought 
will be turned into quite new channels, and will 
not follow what has been done anywhere else either 
in the old world or the new, because, after all, we 
are built on freedom. 

We see growing up before us a great number of 
strong free nations all over the Empire. Nobody 
wants to limit their power of self-government. No 
single man outside a lunatic asylum wants to force 
these young nations into any particular mould. All 
that we want is the maximum of freedom and 
liberty, the maximum of self-development for the 
young nations of the Empire, and machinery that 
will keep all these nations together in the years 
which are before them. I am sure if we disabuse 
our minds of precedents and preconceived ideas we 
shall evolve, in the course of years, the institutions 
and machinery that will meet our difficulties. 

I am full of courage, and I am encouraged and 
inspired by the spirit which I have seen in this 
island since I came here; and I think that that 
spirit, more than anything else, is a pledge of the 
victory which lies before us. 



THE FUTURE CONSTITUTIONAL 
RELATIONS IN THE EMPIRE 



A Speech delivered by General Smuts at the Session of 
the Imperial War Conference on April 16th, when speaking 
to the following resolution, moved by the Prime Minister oj 
Canada. 

Resolution : — 

The Imperial War Conference are of opinion that 
the readjustment of the constitutional relations of the 
component parts of the Empire is too important and 
intricate a subject to be dealt with during the War 
and that it should form the subject of a special Imperial 
Conference to be summoned as soon as possible after 
the cessation of hostilities. . 

They deem it their duty, however, to place on recora 
their view that any such readjustment, while thoroughly 
preserving all existing powers of self-government and 
complete control of domestic affairs, should be based 
upon a full recognition of the Dominions as autonomous 
nations of an Imperial Commonwealth, and of India 
as an important portion of the same, should recognise 
the right of the Dominions and India to an adequate 
voice in foreign policy and in foreign relations, and 
should provide effective arrangements for continuous 
consultation in all important matters of common 
Imperial concern, and for such necessary concerted 
action, founded on consultation, as the several Govern- 
ments may determine. 



THE ftttoKE CONSTITUTIONAL 
DELATIONS IN THE EMPIRE 

I need hardly point out that this is far and 
away the most important point on the agenda 
of our Conference this time. The British 
Empire is the most important and fascinating 
problem in political and constitutional govern- 
ment which the world has ever seen. Whenever 
we come to this question of a proper Consti- 
tution for this Empire we touch on the very 
gravest and most important issues. As a matter 
of fact we are the only group of nations that has 
ever successfully existed. People talk about a 
league of nations and international government, but 
the only successful experiment in international 
government that has ever been made is the British 
Empire, founded on principles which appeal to the 
highest political ideals of mankind. Founded on 
liberal principles, and principles of freedom and 
equality, it has continued to exist for a good time 
now, and our hope is that the basis may be so laid 
for the future that it may become an instrument 
for good, not only in the Empire but in the whole 
world. 

The subject-matter of this resolution, as Sir 
Robert Borden has stated, has been carefully con- 



i4 WAR-TIME SPEECHES 

sidered, and although, quite properly, a definite 
decision on the main problem is to be postponed 
for future action by a more important Conference 
than this, yet certain principles are affirmed here in 
this resolution ^Kich are very important and far- 
reaching. The resolution _f ftrSj in the first ^ 
to the question of the status of tn^ —ULo-overninp; 
Dominions. That matter has already been rei, — a j 
to both by Sir Robert Borden and by Mr. Massey, 
and I wish to say a few words in reference to the 
point. The resolution says that any future settle- 
ment that is come to must " be based upon a full 
recognition of the Dominions as autonomous 
nations of an Imperial Commonwealth." The 
whole question of the future status of the Domi- 
nions is therefore raised in this resolution. So far 
the British Empire has developed along natural 
lines. The Dominions started as Colonies and as 
settlements of the Mother Country and of the 
British Isles. They started as Crown Colonies; 
they developed into self-governing Colonies, and 
now they have become the present Dominions. 
Other parts of the world have been added to the 
Empire, until to-day we have really a congeries of 
nations. These old Colonies and the present 
Dominions have in course of time increased in 
importance, increased in population and in economic 
influence, and are to-day already playing a part in 
the world which seems to my mind to make it very 
necessary that their status should be very seriously 
considered, and should be improved. Too much, 
if I may say so, of the old ideas still cling to the 
new organism which is growing. I think that 



CONSTITUTIONAL RELATIONS 15 

although in practice there is great freedom, yet 
in theory the status of the Dominions is of a 
subject character. Whatever we may say, and 
whatever we may think, we are subject provinces 
of Great Britain. That is the legal theory of the 
Constitution, and in many ways which I need not 
specify to-day that theory still permeates practice. 
I think that is one of the most important questions 
that will have to be dealt with when this question 
of our future constitutional relations on a better 
and more permanent basis comes to be considered. 
The status of the Dominions as equal nations of 
the Empire will have to be recognised to a very 
large extent. The Governments of the Dominions 
as equal Governments of the King in the British 
Commonwealth will have to be recognised far more 
fully than that is done to-day, at any rate in the 
theory of the Constitution if not in practice. That 
is the most important principle laid down in the 
second part of this resolution, that there should be 
" a full recognition of the Dominions as auto- 
nomous nations." And to strengthen the point 
the resolution goes on to affirm that the existing 
powers of self-government should not be inter- 
fered with. Of course, there is a good deal of 
feeling of natural and justifiable jealousy in the 
Dominions as to the rights which they have 
acquired and which they do not like to be tampered 
with, and I think it is very wise to add this to the 
resolution, that their existing powers of self-govern- 
ment should not be tampered with. If that is so 
it follows that one theory, one proposed solution 
of our future constitutional relations, is negatived 



16 WAR-TIME SPEECHES 

by this resolution. If this resolution is passed, 
then one possible solution is negatived, and that 
is the Federal solution. The idea of a future 
Imperial Parliament and a future Imperial Execu- 
tive is negatived by implication by the terms of this 
resolution. The idea on which this resolution is 
based is rather that the Empire would develop on 
the lines upon which it has developed hitherto; that 
there would be more freedom and more equality in 
all its constituent parts; that they will continue 
to legislate for themselves and continue to govern 
themselves; that whatever executive action has to 
be taken, even in common concerns, would have 
to be determined, as the last paragraph says, by 
" the several Governments " of the Empire, and 
the idea of a Federal solution is therefore nega- 
tived, and, I think, very wisely, because it seems 
to me that the circumstances of the Empire entirely 
preclude the Federal solution. Here we are, as I 
say, a group of nations spread over the whole 
world, speaking different languages, belonging to 
different races, with entirely different economic 
circumstances, and to attempt to run even the 
common concerns of that group of nations by means 
of a Central Parliament and a Central Executive is, 
to my mind, absolutely to court disaster. The 
experiment has been tried in the United States and, 
it is said, with great success. Well, the experiment 
in the United States has not lasted very long, and 
we must see whether it will continue successfully 
under the stress of the great experience into which 
America is now entering. But I am informed by 
those who are very close observers of American 



CONSTITUTIONAL RELATIONS 17 

government and American institutions that they 
are certain that the experiment has reached its 
utmost limits. In that case you have a compact 
country, a compact half continent, where people 
live together, where they all go through the same 
mould, and where they are all formed more or less 
on the same lines; whereas in this Empire you 
have an entirely different state of affairs. The 
young nations are developing on their own lines; 
the young nations are growing into Great Powers, 
and it will be impossible to attempt to govern them 
in future by one common Legislature and one 
common Executive. 

Then if we are to continue as nations and to 
grow as nations and govern ourselves as' nations 
the great question arises, How are we to keep this 
Empire together? That is the other important 
point, I take it, in this resolution — the point which 
recognises that there should be effective arrange- 
ments for continuous consultation in all common 
concerns, especially in concerns which are men- 
tioned there specifically, that is foreign policy; that 
in all common concerns there should be effective 
arrangements for continuous consultation. Setting 
aside the Federal solution as not applicable to this 
Empire, which is not merely a State but a system 
of States — setting aside that solution, the question 
arises how you are to keep the different parts 
toegether, and it can only be done on the basis of 
freedom and equality which has existed hitherto, 
only the machinery would have to be arranged on 
which that system could be worked. I think it will 
not pass the wit of man to devise ways of con- 

c 



1 8 WAR-TIME SPEECHES 

tinuous consultation — not intermittent, not every 
four years as we have had hitherto, but continuous 
consultation. Sir Robert Borden has pointed out 
in that great speech of his at the Parliamentary 
dinner — one of the wisest speeches I have ever 
listened to — that the practice which has now arisen 
spontaneously of a double Cabinet may in the 
future provide the germs of a solution. I express 
no opinion upon that, because very intricate con- 
stitutional questions are bound up with that, and 
it is quite possible to arrange this system of con- 
tinuous consultation and conferences even on a 
different basis and yet make it perfectly workable , 
and feasible as a means of keeping the different 
parts of the Empire together. Ic seems to me that 
some such machinery will have to be devised, and 
that it will not be difficult to devise it once we| 
come to sit round the table and discuss the matter 
carefully. In that way it will be possible, while] 
leaving full executive action to the various more 
or less equal Governments of the Empire, while 
leaving full executive responsibility to them, to; 
see that in all important concerns there is consulta-L 
tion and continuous consultation; that there is an' 
exchange of ideas, and that the system, whilst pre- 
serving freedom and equality in its parts, will work 
with a strong sense of unity at the centre. 

I think, if this resolution is passed, we shall 
have taken an immense step forward in the history 
of the Empire. If we pass no other resolution at 
this Conference than this one, I am sure that we 
shall have done a good day's work for this Empire. 
We are emerging out of one era and we are enter- 



CONSTITUTIONAL RELATIONS 19 

ing upon another where much greater problems will 
confront us than ever before. So far it has been 
possible for us each to go his own way, meeting 
once in so many years. In future it will be neces- 
sary for us to keep much more closely in touch with 
each other. 

These are the principles which are affirmed in 
this resolution, leaving the actual solution of our 
constitutional problem to be dealt with hereafter. 
These are the principles which are affirmed here, 
and I heartily endorse them and give my adhesion 
to this resolution. 



c 2 



THE BRITISH COMMONWEALTH 

OF NATIONS 



A Speech delivered by General Smuts at the Banquet 
given in his honour by members of both Houses of Parlia- 
ment on May i$th, 1917, in the Royal Gallery at the House 
of Lords. 

Field-Marshal Viscount French, in proposing the health 
of the guest, said: 

It is true that the eminent General whom we are enter- 
taining at this moment justly shines amongst us as a highly 
successful commander in the field, and it is in the light of 
Ms great military talents that the whole British Empire 
to-day regards him. If this were all, it might be right 
that his health should be proposed by a comrade in arms, 
but it is not necessary for me to reiterate the well-known 
fact that he is also a great lawyer and a great statesman. 
Although I feel myself unfitted to speak on such a subject 
in the presence of so distinguished a gathering and on so 
historic an occasion, I am yet glad of the opportunity in 
order to recall a period of time sixteen years ago, a time 
to which the General himself has more than once eloquently 
referred since he has been in this country, when I had the 
honour {and I feel it to have been a, great honour) of opposing 
him in the field. 

With consummate bravery and ability he commanded 
the Boer forces in Cape Colony throughout the last year 
of the South African War. General Smuts took, as we 
know, a large and important part in the conduct of the 



COMMONWEALTH OF NATIONS 23 

first two years of the war, but I prefer to choose, as an 
illustration of his military genius, that part of the campaign 
for which he had the sole responsibility, and in which I 
had the best reason to feel and appreciate his power and 
ability as an opponent. " If you be a great general," 
said Sulla to Marius, " come and fight me." " If you be 
a great general," replied Marius to Sulla, " compel me 
to fight you." I say, imlhout hesitation, that day after 
day, week after week, month after month, our distinguished 
guest, with every disadvantage in the way of numbers, 
arms, transport, equipment, and supply, eluded all my 
attempts to bring him to decisive action, and impressed 
me far more than any opponent I have ever met with his 
power as a great commander and leader of men. The 
British Army has, as I hope and believe, fairly earned a 
reputation for conducting war with that generous chivalry 
which can alone justify it in the eyes of civilisation, and 
I rejoice to look back into the past, and to realise how our 
enemy of that time, commanded by such men as Botha and 
Smuts, continually vied with us in the constant maintenance 
of those finer sentiments which brave enemies should ever 
cultivate. 

I have always held the opinion that any kind of public 
comment, critical or otherwise, upon military operations 
is not only useless and foolish, but absolutely unjust until 
the full facts of such operations, or set of operations, are 
fully known and understood, when all the cards on both 
sides are laid upon the table. The results of the campaign 
in East Africa up to date are so apparent and decisive 
that I do not think I can be accused of not observing this 
principle when I describe those operations as in the highest 
degree successful, and as another evidence of General 
Smuts's great military powers. I had a most interesting 
conversation with him the other day, in which he graphically 



24 WAR-TIME SPEECHES 

described to me his plan of campaign, and his story, though 
told in the simplest and plainest of language, revealed to 
me unmistakably the workings of the mind of a great 
strategist and tactician. 

I have referred to General Smuts as a great leader and 
a great statesman. It is to my mind an extraordinary 
fact that some of the greatest soldiers in the world's history 
have not made the profession of arms the chief study of 
their lives. We know that Cromwell, Lee, Grant, and other 
famous soldiers were not brought up to lead men in the 
field, and it may hardly be said even in the case of the 
great Napoleon himself that the military art alone engaged 
his constant thought. Our guest of to-night will go down to 
history with these other great names as living illustrations 
of what we mean when we talk of born leaders of men. 
Personally, I do not know which I am proudest of— of 
having crossed swords with him, or fought by his side. 
Both as an opponent and as a friend he has taught us all 
great lessons. 



THE BRITISH COMMONWEALTH OF 
NATIONS 

I cannot express to you how deeply I appreciate 
the honour which you have done me. Ever since 
I came, two months ago, to this country, I have 
received nothing but the most perfect and charming 
kindness and hospitality everywhere, and this 
hospitality has culminated in the unique banquet 
at which we are present to-night. I appreciate it 
all the more because I know it is given at a time 
when the greatest struggle in the world's history is 
being decided, and when nobody feels inclined to 
indulge in festivities. From the Government of the 
country I have received many marks of confidence, 
which I have endeavoured to requite in the 
only way possible to me, by giving them myfrank 
and honest views on every question. When 1 
return home, as I hope shortly to do, I shall be able 
to tell the people of South Africa that I have been 
received here by you, not as a guest or as a welcome 
stranger, but simply as one of yourselves, though 
speaking with a different accent and laying a 
different emphasis on many things, as no doubt 



26 WAR-TIME SPEECHES 

becomes a barbarian from the outer marches of the 
Empire. 

I am profoundly thankful to you, Lord French, 
for the words which have fallen from you. The 
words of eulogy you have expressed in regard to 
myself are largely, I think, undeserved; but, at 
any rate, I accept them as coming from an old 
opponent and comrade in arms. I know they are 
meant in the best spirit, and I accept them in that 
spirit even where I feel I do not deserve them. 
Your words to-night and the great compliment 
you have paid me by presiding at this gathering 
recall to my mind many an incident of the stirring 
times to which you have referred when we were 
opposing commanders in the last year of the Boer 
War. 

On one occasion, I remember, I was surrounded 
in a very nasty 61ock of mountains by Lord French. 
I was face to face practically with disaster. Nothing 
was left me but the most diligent scouting to find a 
way out. I did some of the scouting myself, with 
a small party. I ventured into a place which looked 
promising, and which bore the appropriate name 
of " Murderer's Gap." I am sorry to say I was the 
only man who came out alive from that gap. In 
an account which I saw subsequently of this inci- 
dent I saw the remark made that " one Boer 
escaped, but he probably had so many bullets in 
him that he would be no further danger." 

Well, Lord French, I have survived to be your 
guest this evening. I was in a very tight corner 
there. I did get out, and two days afterwards I 
did break through — blessed word in these times. 



COMMONWEALTH OF NATIONS 27 

At night I came out of those mountains to the 
railway. It was a very dark night, and my small 
force was just on the point of crossing the railway 
when we heard that a train was coming. I allowed 
the train to pass, and we stood alongside and looked 
on. You can imagine what my feelings were when 
I heard some time afterwards that the only freight 
on that train was Lord French, who was moving 
from one part of his front to the other to find out 
how I had broken through. If I had not missed 
that chance Lord French would have been on that 
occasion my guest. No doubt a very welcome, 
though a somewhat embarrassing guest! Now 
to-night I am his guest, I hope not embarrassing, 
though very much embarrassed. 

Those were very difficult and strenuous days — 
days in which one learnt many valuable lessons, 
good for all one's life. One of the lessons I learned 
was that, under the stress of great difficulties such 
as we were then passing through, the only things 
which survived were the simple human feelings, 
feelings of loyalty to your fellows and feelings of 
comradeship and patriotism which carried you 
through danger and privation. We soldiers know 
the extreme value of these simple feelings. We 
know how far they can go, and that in the end they 
can bear the whole weight of civilisation. When you 
think that, in addition to this, you have the circum- 
stance which you have referred to, then you can see 
how out of that calamity has been produced the 
state of affairs in South Africa to-day. You can 
see how these simple human feelings of loyalty to 
your comrades and respect for your opponents on 



28 WAR-TIME SPEECHES 

both sides have led to a new basis on which to build 
the larger South Africa we have to-day. 

I am sure that in the present great struggle which 
is being waged in the world you will see the same 
causes leading to a like result. Here you have from 
all parts of the British Empire young men gathered 
together on the battlefields of Europe and the 
other fields of war. While your statesmen may be 
planning great schemes of union for the future of 
the Empire, my feeling is that the work is already 
largely done. The spirit of comradeship which has 
been born in this war and on the battlefields of 
Europe among men from all parts of the Empire 
will be far more powerful than any instrument of 
government we can erect in the future. I feel sure 
that in after years, when we or our successors come 
to sum up what has happened, there will be a good 
credit balance due to this feeling which has been 
built up and which will be the best support for the 
Empire in the future. 

Once more, as many ages ago it happened under 
the Roman Emperors, the German volcano is in 
eruption and the whole world is shaken. No doubt 
in this great convulsion you are faced in this 
country with the most enormous problems which 
any Government or people has ever been called 
upon to solve, problems of world-wide strategy, of 
man-power, of communications, of food supply, 
problems of every imaginable kind and of such 
magnitude that it is almost beyond the wit of man 
to deal with them. It is inevitable where you have 
so many difficulties to face that one should forget 
to keep before oneself the situation as a whole; and 



COMMONWEALTH OF NATIONS 29 

yet this is very necessary. It is most essential that 
even in this struggle, even when Europe is looming 
so much before our eyes, we should keep before us 
and see steadily the problem of the whole situation. 
I would ask you not to forget in these times the 
British Commonwealth of nations. Europe will 
not continue to loom so much in view as it does 
at present. 

I want to say a few words to-night on this sub- 
ject, because I think there is a tendency to forget 
some of the aspects of the question with which we 
are now confronted. This is one of the reasons 
why I am glad that an Imperial Conference has 
been called at this time. It is apparently a very 
inopportune moment, but the calling together of 
the Conference has helped to turn attention once 
more to that aspect of the whole situation which is 
so important to us. It is not only Europe we have 
to consider, but the future of the great Common- 
wealth to which we all belong. This Common- 
wealth is peculiarly constituted. It is scattered over 
the whole world. It is not a compact territory, and 
it is dependent for its very existence on world-wide 
communications — communications which must be 
maintained or this Empire goes to pieces. 

In the years of peace behind us we see what has 
happened. Everywhere on your communications 
Germany has settled down; everywhere on your 
communications you will find a German colony or 
a German settlement, small or large; and the day 
might come when you would be in jeopardy 
through your lines of communication being cut. 
One of the by-products of the war has been that the 



3 o WAR-TIME SPEECHES 

whole world outside of Europe has been cleared of 
the enemy. Germany has been swept from all the 
seas and all the continents except Central Europe. 
While Germany has been gaining ground in Central 
Europe, from all the rest of the world she has been 
swept clear. You are now in this position : that 
once more you can consider the problem of your 
future as a whole. When peace comes to be made 
you have all these cards in your hand, and you can 
go carefully into the question of what is necessary 
for your future security and the future safety of the 
Empire, and can say what you are going to keep 
and what you are going to give away. I hope that 
when the time comes — I am speaking for myself 
and expressing nobody's opinion but my own — 
when the time comes for peace to be made we shall 
bear in mind not only Central Europe, but the 
whole British Empire. As far as we are concerned, 
we do not wish this war to have been fought in 
vain. We have not fought for material gain or 
for territory, but we have fought for security in the 
future. If we attach any value to this group of 
nations which composes the British Empire, then 
in settling the terms of peace we shall have to look 
to its future security and safety. I hope that no 
arrangement will be made which will jeopardise the 
valuable results which have been attained. That is 
the geographical situation. 

There remains the difficult question of the con- 
stitutional adjustment and relations of the British 
Empire. At a luncheon which was given some 
time back by the Empire Parliamentary Associa- 
tion to the delegates to the Imperial Conference, I 



COMMONWEALTH OF NATIONS 31 

said rather cryptically that I did not think this was 
a matter in which we could follow precedent, and I 
hope you will bear with me to-night if I say a few 
words on that theme. I think that we are inclined 
to make mistakes in thinking about this group of 
nations to which we belong, because too often we 
think about it as one State. We are not a State. 
The British Empire is much more than a State. I 
think the very expression "Empire" is mislead- 
ing, because it makes people think that we are one 
community, to which the word "Empire" can 
appropriately be applied. Germany is an Empire. 
Rome was an Empire. India is an Empire. But 
we are a system of nations. We are not a State, 
but a community of States and nations. We are far 
greater than any Empire which has ever existed, 
and by using this ancient expression we really dis- 
guise the main fact that our whole position is 
different, and that we are not one State or nation or 
empire, but a whole world by ourselves, consisting 
of many nations, of many States, and all sorts of 
communities, under one flag. 

We are a system of States, and not a stationary 
system, but a dynamic evolving system, always 
going forward to new destinies. Take the position 
of that system to-day. Here you have the United 
Kingdom with a number of Crown Colonies. 
Besides that you have a large Protectorate like 
ligypt, an Empire by itself. Then you have a 
great Dependency like India, also an Empire by 
itself, where civilisation has existed from time im- 
memorial, where we are trying to see how East and 
West can work together. These are enormous 



32 WAR-TIME SPEECHES 

problems; but beyond them we come to the so- 
called Dominions, independent in their govern- 
ment, which have been evolved on the principles of 
your free constitutional system into almost inde- 
pendent States, which all belong to this community 
of nations, and which I prefer to call " the British 
Commonwealth of Nations." 

You can see that no political ideas which have 
been evolved in the past will apply to this world 
which is comprised in the British Empire; and any 
name we have yet found for this group is insuffi- 
cient. The man who will find a proper name for 
this system will, I think, do real service to the 
Empire. 

The question is : How are you going to provide 
for the future government of this Commonwealth ? 
An entirely new problem is presented. If you 
want to see how great it is, you must indulge in 
comparison. Look at the United States. There 
you find what is essentially one nation, not perhaps 
in the fullest sense, but what is more and more 
growing into one nation; one big State consisting, 
no doubt, of separate parts, but all linked up into 
one big continuous area. The United States had 
to solve the problem which this presented, and 
they discovered the federal solution — a solution 
which provides subordinate treatment for the sub- 
ordinate parts, but one national Federal Govern- 
ment and Parliament for the whole. Compare with 
that state the enormous system which is comprised 
in the British Empire. You can see at once that a 
solution which has been found practicable in the 
case of the United States will never work in the 



COMMONWEALTH OF NATIONS 33 

case of a system such as we are comprising a world 
by itself. 

What I feel in regard to all the empires of the 
past, and even in regard to the United States, is 
that the effort has always been towards forming 
one nation. All the empires we have known in the 
past and that exist to-day are founded on the idea 
of assimilation, of trying to force human material 
into one mould. Your whole idea and basis is 
entirely different. You do not want to standardise 
the nations of the British Empire; you want to 
develop them towards greater, fuller nationality. 
These communities, the offspring of the Mother 
Country, or territories like my own, which have 
been annexed after the vicissitudes of war, must not 
be moulded on any one pattern. You want them to 
develop freely on the principles of self-govern- 
ment, and therefore your whole idea is different 
from anything that has ever existed before. That is 
the fundamental fact we have to bear in mind — 
that this British Commonwealth of nations does not 
stand for standardisation or denationalisation, but 
for the fuller, richer, and more various life of all the 
nations comprised in it. 

Even the nations which have fought against it, 
like my own, must feel that their cultural interests, 
their language, their religion, are as safe and as 
secure under the British flag as those of the children 
of your own household and your own blood. It is 
only in proportion as this is realised that you will 
fulfil the true mission which is yours. Therefore 
it seems to me that there is only one solution, and 
that is a solution supplied by our past traditions — 

D 



34 WAR-TIME SPEECHES 

the traditions of freedom, self-government, and of 
the fullest development for all constituent parts of 
the Empire. 

The question arises : How are you going to 
keep this Commonwealth of nations together? If 
there is to be this full development towards a more 
varied and richer life among our nations, how are 
you going to keep them together? It seems 
to me that there are two potent factors that you 
must rely upon for the future. The first is your 
hereditary kingship, the other is our Conference 
system. I have seen some speculations recently 
in the newspapers about the position of the 
kingship in this country — speculations by people 
who, I am sure, have not thought of the wider 
issues that are at stake. You cannot make a 
republic of the British Commonwealth of nations. 

If you had to elect a President, he would have to 
be a President not only here in these islands, but 
all over the British Empire — in India and in the 
Dominions — the President who would be really 
representative of all these peoples; and here you 
would be facing an absolutely insoluble problem. 
The theory of the Constitution is that the King is 
not your King, but the King of all of us, ruling 
over every part of the whole Commonwealth 
of nations; and if his place should be taken 
by anybody else, that somebody will have to 
be elected under a process which it will pass the 
wit of man to devise. Let us be thankful for 
mercies. We have a kingship here which is really 
not very different from a hereditary republic. I am 
sure that more and more in the future the trend 



COMMONWEALTH OF NATIONS 35 

will be in the direction of a more democratic king- 
ship, and I shall not be surprised to see the time 
come when our Royal princes, instead of getting 
their consorts from among the princelings of Cen- 
tral Europe, will go for them to the Dominions 
and other portions of the British Empire. 

In regard to the present system of Imperial 
Conferences, it will be necessary to devise better 
machinery for common consultation than we have 
at present. So far, we have relied on Imperial 
Conferences which meet once in every four years 
or thereabouts. However useful has been the work 
done at these Conferences, they have not, in my 
opinion, been a complete success. It will be neces- 
sary to devise better means of achieving our ends. 
A precedent has now been laid down of calling 
together the Dominion Prime Ministers and repre- 
sentatives from the Empire of India to the Imperial 
Cabinet. You have seen a statement made by Lord 
Curzon that it is the intention of the Government 
to perpetuate this system in the future. Although 
we shall have to wait for a complete explanation of 
the scheme from the Government, yet it is clear that 
in an institution like that we have a better instru- 
ment of common consultation than we have in the 
old Imperial Conference which meets only every 
four years and which discusses a number of sub- 
jects not really of first-rate importance. 

What is necessary is that there shall be called 
together the most important rulers of the Empire, 
say once a year, to discuss matters which concern 
all parts of the Empire in common, in order that 
causes of friction and misunderstanding may be 

D 2 



36 WAR-TIME SPEECHES 

prevented or removed. We also need a meeting 
like that in order to lay down a common policy in 
common matters concerning the Empire as a whole, 
and to determine the true orientation of our 
common Imperial policy. There is, for instance, 
foreign policy on which the fate of the Empire 
might from time to time depend. Some such 
method of procedure must lead to very important 
results and very great changes. You cannot settle 
a common foreign policy for the whole of the British 
Empire without changing that policy very much 
from what it has been in the past, because the policy 
will have to be, for one thing, far simpler. In the 
other parts of the Empire we do not understand 
diplomatic finesse. If our foreign policy is going to 
rest not only on the basis of our Cabinet here, 
but, finally, on the whole of the British Empire, 
it will have to be a simpler policy, a far more intel- 
ligible policy, and a policy which will in the end 
lead to less friction and greater safety. No one 
will dispute the primacy of the Imperial Govern- 
ment in this respect. We shall always look upon 
the British Government as the senior partner in 
the concern, as the managing director responsible 
for our foreign affairs and responsible for carrying 
on those affairs in the intervals between the meet- 
ings of the Imperial Cabinet. But the Imperial 
foreign policy must always be subject to the prin- 
ciples laid down from time to time at the meetings 
of the Imperial Cabinet. Such a policy will in the 
long run be saner and safer for the Empire as a 
whole. I also think it will lead to greater publicity. 
After the great catastrophe which has overtaken 



COMMONWEALTH OF NATIONS 37 

Europe, nations in future will want to know more 
about their foreign policy. I am sure that the after 
effects of a change like this, although it looks a 
simple one, are going to be very important and 
far-reaching not only for our Commonwealth of 
nations but for the whole world. 

Far too much stress has been laid in the past 
on instruments of government. People are inclined 
to forget that the world is growing more demo- 
cratic, and that public opinion and the forces finding 
expression in public opinion are going to be far 
more powerful than they have been in the past. 
Where you build up a common patriotism and a 
common ideal, the instrument of government will 
not be a thing that matters so much as the spirit 
which actuates the whole. 

When I look round this room to-night and see 
all who are present, I am filled with gratitude to you 
who have assembled to do me honour; to time, the 
great judge, the merciful judge, the healer of 
wounds; and to that ''Divinity that shapes our 
ends, rough-hew them how we will." And then I 
think of the difficulties that still lie ahead of us, 
and that are going to test all the nations fighting 
for liberty far more than they have ever been tested 
before. And I hope and pray that they all may 
have clearness of vision and purpose, and especially 
that strength of soul in the coming days which will 
be even more necessary than strength of arm. I 
believe, I verily believe, that we are within reach 
of priceless and immeasurable good, not only for 
this United Kingdom and group of nations to which 
we belong, but also for the whole world. It will 



38 WAR-TIME SPEECHES 

depend largely on us whether the great prize is won 
in this war, or whether the world will once more 
be plunged into disaster and long years of weary 
waiting for the dawn. The prize is within our 
grasp if we have the strength of soul to see the thing 
through until victory crowns the efforts of our 
brave men in the field. 



THE WAR AND THE EMPIRE 



A Speech delivered by General Smuts in reply to the 
address by the Lord Provost on the occasion of the presenta- 
tion of the Freedom of the City of Edinburgh on April nth, 
1917. 



THE WAR AND THE EMPIRE 

General Smuts said the Lord Provost was right 
in saying that he had constantly all through the 
years behind them in South Africa striven for a 
spirit of co-operation, of sympathy, and of union 
between all races in that country to which he had 
the honour to belong. Union was inevitable in 
South Africa, but it had been his desire and his 
striving for many years that it should be such a 
union as that between England and Scotland, and 
not the sort of union they had had between Eng- 
land and Ireland. They had had in South Africa 
all the makings of an insoluble political problem; 
but by God's providence, and by the forbearance of 
both races, and their wisdom, they had in the end 
achieved a union which was like that between Eng- 
land and Scotland. Sir Robert Borden had re- 
minded them that fifteen years ago he was fighting 
against the British Empire. There had been no 
change in him. The cause he fought for fifteen 
years ago was the cause for which he was fighting 
to-day. They in this country were a large-hearted 
people; and he was sure they would forgive him 
if he expressed his view that fifteen years ago, 
eighteen years ago, they were wrong. For a brief 
moment in their long national history they went off 



42 WAR-TIME SPEECHES 

the track, and they came to grips with a very small 
people; and in that struggle he did his best in order 
to conserve the self-existence and the liberty of his 
people. He was sometimes proud to think that, 
according to the old Apostolic injunction, the Boers 
had heaped coals of fire upon their heads, and had 
been the instrument of bringing them back to the 
right track, to their old traditions of liberty, to the 
old ideal of standing by small peoples, and to that 
consciousness of right which had guided them in 
the past and would guide them in the future. As 
soon as the British Government came to wiser 
counsels, they handed back to South Africa, so far 
as it was possible, the liberty which they in South 
Africa thought would be jeopardised; they made 
them a free country; and in that way they laid the 
foundation of a large and great State in South 
Africa. As the result of that policy adopted after 
the Boer War, they saw to-day a nation that fought 
against the British Empire with a vigour and a per- 
sistence seldom seen in the history of the world, had 
been and still was fighting with all its strength for 
the common cause. That had been brought about, 
and could only have been brought about, by the 
spirit of liberty, which had been the guiding prin- 
ciple of British history. Sir Robert Borden had 
told them that in the discussions they had had 
among themselves privately about the future of the 
British Empire there was no great difference of 
opinion between them, and the reason was simple. 
They saw clearly that it was only on a basis of free- 
dom and the completest autonomy that the British 
Empire would continue to exist and would become 



THE WAR AND THE EMPIRE 43 

stronger in the future. The British Empire was not 
a State; it was half a world. It comprised old 
nations as well as young nations, and all the vast 
congeries of States could only be kept together in 
the future on the basis of liberty. He was sure 
that when the final settlement came to be made of 
the constitutional arrangements of the British Em- 
pire that would be found to be the only solution. 
The spirit of comradeship, which was the only basis 
of union, was there, and on that basis he was sure 
they would find the solution of our constitutional 
relations in the future, and not in mere rigid politi- 
cal machinery. 

In these times we were living under a great 
shadow. On the previous afternoon he was in 
France, where he had been visiting our front. He 
had looked at the Vimy Ridge, and he had seen the 
opening phases of what might become one of the 
great battles in history. He had seen what our men 
had to come through and what they had to suffer 
for the great cause we all had at heart. He wished 
they could see the front over which our men had 
been advancing in snow, sleet, and rain these last 
few days — one vast expanse of mud covered with 
shell pits so close together that only the lips of the 
craters were left. The pits were often so deep that 
if anybody fell into them he got drowned. That 
was the country in which hundreds of thousands of 
our brave comrades had been living for months, 
and over which they were advancing to victory 
to-day. He found them one and all, from the 
highest officer to the lowest private, imbued with 
the same common spirit — no music-hall spirit, no 



44 WAR-TIME SPEECHES 

spirit of bravado, but of determination to see the 
thing through. The organisation left nothing to be 
desired. German organisation had been overtaken. 
He listened to a bombardment of heavy guns which 
was probably the greatest that had ever been heard 
in the history of the world. Tens of thousands of 
tons of projectiles were being hurled against the 
enemy, and in the evening when he came to look at 
the figures he found that, notwithstanding the bom- 
bardment, the amount of our shells at the front had 
actually increased that day. In other respects he was 
convinced that the machine worked smoothly and 
well, and that being so, combined with the spirit of 
the men, he thought they need not despair. 

Sir Robert Borden had referred to the criticism 
of the air service. Here was a fact that was to his 
mind absolutely convincing. During the days he 
was at the front he never saw an enemy machine. 
We were making preparations for a great advance; 
we were accumulating men and material beyond 
description, and there was no enemy machine to see 
what we were doing. Why not ? Because our air- 
men were fighting them ten, fifteen, and twenty 
miles behind their lines. No doubt our casualties 
had been great; but they did not mind casualties 
when they were making a great victorious offensive. 
We had completely established our mastery in the 
air. He was sorry when he saw sometimes carping 
criticism. No doubt in a democratic country, and 
with a free Press, they would have a great deal of 
public criticism; but in the present case it worked 
with some disadvantage. Our airmen were not big, 
strong fellows like himself; they were schoolboys, 



THE WAR AND THE EMPIRE 45 

youngsters who have been taken from their seats in 
school and put on our aeroplanes. When these 
brave souls saw that their branch of the Service was 
the continual subject of attack, it took the heart out 
of them. If there was any part of our Service they 
could be proud of it was the part played by those 
youngsters who dominated the enemy in the air. 

This was not a war of armies, it was a war of 
nations, and the whole of this nation must be 
dominated by the same spirit as the Army. He 
wanted the spirit of the people in the British Em- 
pire to be worthy of the Army, and he was sure they 
could do far more as a people than they had been 
doing hitherto. This was a struggle which went to 
the foundation of things, a struggle such as came to 
the world only once in a thousand years. Were they 
going to develop in future as free nations, working 
out their own destiny all over the world according 
to the light of their conscience and reason, or were 
they going to be tyrannised by militarism and all 
the evils that followed in the train of militarism? 
If Germany won, then she was justified, and her 
system was justified, and future civilisation would 
have to be on military and autocratic lines. Did 
they want that? They wanted freedom, and they 
wanted the spirit of Christian ethical civilisation to 
prevail. The words of President Wilson that 
"this world must be made safe for democracy " put 
the whole issue in a few words. The ruling classes 
in Germany must be broken before there could be 
peace and union in the world again. The only 
guarantee they could have for the future was vic- 
tory now. 



YOUTH AND HONOUR 



Speech delivered by General Smuts at the Senate House 
on May i6th, 1917, on the occasion of the conferring of 
the Honorary Degree of Doctor of Laws at the University 
of Cambridge. 

The Degree was also conferred on His Excellency Dr. 
Walter Hines Page, United States Ambassador to the Court 
of St. James'. 

[The visit of the United States Ambassador (Dr. Walter 
Hines Page) and the South African Envoy to the Council 
of the Empire (Lieut. -General J. C. Smuts, K.C.) to Cam- 
bridge on Wednesday, to receive the honorary degrees 
conferred upon them by the University, was marked by 
an event believed to be without precedent. Both the recipients, 
after the degrees had been conferred upon them and the 
Congregation had been formally dissolved, were accorded 
the privilege of making speeches to the crowded assembly. 
— Cambridge Daily News, May iyth.] 



YOUTH AND HONOUR 

Lieut-General Smuts, in replying to the address 
of the Public Orator, said that was one of the 
proudest days of his life. Many years ago, when 
he was an undergraduate of this University, he 
never dreamt that day would come when an 
honorary degree would be conferred upon him 
there. But he had seen so many wonderful things 
come to pass in his short lifetime that he was sur- 
prised at nothing any more. But he did appreciate 
that honour — more, perhaps, than any other honour 
that had come to him. The honour which was 
that day conferred upon him by his old Alma 
Mater reminded him of the happy years — some of 
the happiest years of his life — that he had spent 
here in this University. In the intervening years 
they had drifted far apart. He had gone his ways, 
and they had not always been their ways. But 
in the course of time those divergent paths had 
met once more, and there he was, once more in 
the bosom of the old family, received not as a 
guest, but as one of themselves. He was especially 
proud to be there that day because of the very 
great change he saw had come over his old Uni- 
versity. When he came on his present visit to 



5 o WAR-TIME SPEECHES 

England he saw Cambridge transformed. He saw 
nothing but uniforms here, and it was the most 
convincing proof possible that even this most con- 
servative of places was moving with the times; was 
not only moving with the times, but was setting 
the rest of this United Kingdom one of the finest 
examples possible. 

In his day, young men competed in the Uni- 
versity for honours. That day he saw the young 
men of the University competing for a higher 
honour — a super-honour — an honour not only of 
achievement, but of sacrifice. And in distant parts 
of the world, when he rode over large parts of 
Africa, he from time to time scanned the new 
honours lists of this University, and he had seen 
the very, very large numbers of young men who 
had given their lives, their health, their all, for 
the cause that was the highest and best of all. 
That made him prouder than he had ever been 
before of the University to which he belonged. 

He saw many of them there that day — many 
young officers preparing and training for "that great 
struggle, and he, as an old hand at that game, could 
only wish them sincerely the best of possible luck. 
He wanted them to bear in mind that to them 
was given a chance which seldom comes to human 
beings. To them had come the chance, as it had 
come to our generation, of fighting to the utter- 
most for the greatest of all human causes — the 
cause which, as the Public Orator had said in his 
speech, he (the speaker) had fought for constantly 
all his life — the cause of liberty. We would not 
see, so far as it lay in our power, liberty perish 



YOUTH AND HONOUR 51 

from the face of the earth. We would not see the 
human soul harnessed to any war machine or any- 
State machine, however glorious or powerful it 
might be. It was for that reason that we had 
taken up arms — for that reason that the United 
States of America had forsaken their most sacred 
political tradition which they had followed now 
for more than one hundred years, and had come 
into the struggle, because they found that there 
was something greater and more valuable than 
tradition, that there was a cause which surpassed 
all tradition. They had joined in the struggle for 
human liberty. 

" It has come to you now, in your day," he con- 
tinued, " as it had come to many of us in this 
generation, to lay our all upon this altar, and I 
hope that you may have luck — not only the luck 
of achievement, of doing your very best for the 
greatest of all causes, but that you may see victory 
crown your efforts, and that in the days to come 
we shall all rejoice, or those that come after 
us will rejoice, that we were not found wanting 
in the greatest of all tests and did not fail in the 
greatest examination of all history." It was very 
unusual, so far as his experience went, that any 
speech should be made in that sacred hall, and he 
apologised for having spoken so long. What he 
had said had been meant from the heart to those 
boys who were going to the front, and who were 
accompanied by our dearest and best wishes for 
their future welfare in the work in which they 
would be engaged. 



e 2 



A LEAGUE OF NATIONS 



A Speech delivered by General Smuts at the Central Hall, 
Westminster, at a meeting held under the auspices of the 
League of Nations Society on May 14th, 1917. 

The meeting was presided over by Viscount Bryce, and 
the following Resolution was moved by General Smuts : — 

" That it is expedient in the interests of mankind 
that some machinery should be set up after the present 
war for the purpose of maintaining international 
rights and general peace, and this meeting welcomes 
the suggestions put forward for this purpose by the 
President of the United States and other influential 
statesmen in America and commends to the sympathetic 
consideration of the British peoples the idea of forming 
a union of free nations for the preservation of permanent 
peace." 



A LEAGUE OF NATIONS 

The Committee of this Society has done me the 
honour to ask me this afternoon to move the re- 
solution. I do so with very great embarrassment, 
because I feel that the subject with which we are 
dealing this afternoon is probably the most im- 
portant, but also the most difficult, that has ever 
arisen upon the horizon of human thought. I 
believe it is Cicero who said that the State was 
the divinest of institutions. If the State is a divine 
institution, how much more divine is that institu- 
tion which we are wishful to create, which will 
preserve peace, order, and good government not 
among the citizens of a State only, but among the 
nations of the world. But the subject is sur- 
rounded by the most perplexing difficulties, and 
certainly I this afternoon have nothing dogmatic 
to say. At the same time one feels that progress 
has been made, and that the subject is no longer 
merely academic, no longer merely Utopian. If 
the war has done nothing more, it has at any rate 
done this — it has stamped into the hearts of mil- 
lions of men and women an intense desire for a 
better order of things. And you see the result in 
a meeting like this this afternoon, where you have 
not only gathered the dreamers and the idealists, 



56 WAR-TIME SPEECHES 

the visionaries, who are the salt of the earth, but 
also practical men, and even men of blood like 
myself. Well — it is high time that something 
were done. 

The losses and sufferings of this war truly baffle 
description; one cannot contemplate without the. 
profoundest emotion this horror that has come over 
Christendom, this spirit of self-destruction which 
has overtaken our so-called civilisation. After all 
the fair promises, all the fair hopes, all the fine 
enthusiasm of the nineteenth century, this is what 
we have come to. It is computed that nearly 
8,000,000 people have already been killed in this 
war — not the old and decrepit, not the unfit, but 
the best — the very best, those who should have 
been the natural creators of the new world, they 
lie buried on the battlefields of civilisation, while 
larger numbers have been maimed and rendered 
unfit for the rest of their lives. It is probable that 
the number of killed and wounded in this war is 
not far short of that of the total white population of 
the British Empire. Is that not a matter to stir 
humanity to its depths ? I think the time has come 
for very, very serious consideration of this matter. 
You see the most criminal disregard of all laws, 
human and divine. You see civilisation itself 
almost crumbling to pieces, and I am sure if some 
means were not provided by which such calamities 
could be prevented in future, and the repetition 
of wars like this was still possible in the future, 
then the whole fabric of our civilisation will be 
in danger, people will become filled with a uni- 
versal despair, and you will find the nations of 



A LEAGUE OF NATIONS 57 

the world saying, as the poet said in his despair, 
" From the world's bitter wind seek shelter in 
the shadow of the grave." For what would be 
the use of life, or what would be the use of 
civilisation, if those are the fruits of all our efforts 
and all our endeavours? 

The scale of the disaster is so vast that the whole 
matter seems to be uncontrollable. Our nineteenth 
century science taught us how to mobilise the 
forces of nature, but it did not strengthen our social 
conscience correspondingly, and the result is that all 
these forces have been collected into some horrible 
engine of destruction which now moves like the 
cursed thing it is, like some blind destiny which 
is treading over our civilisation. If we had the 
moral ideas of the ancient Greeks we should believe 
this to be black destiny — some supernatural power 
which was driving mankind on to despair. But 
we know better. We know that this war is not 
the work of some superhuman agency; this war 
is man-made. It is human forces that lie at the 
basis of it, human intelligence, human stupidity, 
human greed and ambition ; they are all at the basis 
of this calamity that has overtaken us, and there- 
fore this is no occasion for us to fold hands and 
to bow our heads before the storm. This is a 
time for action; this tragedy that has come over 
us calls for action. What the human intelligence 
has done the human intelligence can undo again. 
And I feel sure that if one-hundredth part of the 
consideration and the thought that have been given 
to the war is given to schemes of peace, then you 
will never see any war again. 



58 WAR-TIME SPEECHES 

But I agree with Lord Bryce, you must begin 
with the hearts of men, and I am not sure that 
this war has not brought this matter to that level 
— to the hearts of men and women — I am not sure 
that a passion has not been born for peace after 
this war which in the end will prove stronger 
than all the passion for war which has so 
far overwhelmed us, and that is the only 
thing that can save us in the long run. That 
is what I am looking forward to, that this 
war has not been a merely destructive agency, but 
that it will prove a creative power — that it will call 
forth in the human heart those feelings which will 
counterbalance the fierce passions which have in 
the past driven us on this evil road. 

Now at first blush it does seem as if the end of 
this war would be about the most hopeless time 
imaginable to talk of schemes of lasting peace. For 
at the end of this war you will find the world 
divided into two hostile camps, with a chasm of 
hatred between them such as probably has never 
been seen in the world before. You will find an 
atmosphere of hatred and ill-will and of inter- 
national estrangement such as has never been seen 
before in the history of the world. And when you 
come to think of creating machinery for lasting 
peace you will have to bear in mind that the time, 
in a certain sense, will be the most unpropitious 
possible for the effort you are trying to make. 

On the other hand, I have also this feeling, and 
I am sure it is the right feeling, that deeper than 
that has been the good work that the war has 
done — the creation of a better feeling in the hearts 



A LEAGUE OF NATIONS 59 

of men — the passion which has been burnt into 
millions of minds and hearts that this state of 
affairs should never be tolerated again. This will 
not only be the feeling of the millions of men who 
will return from the front, the men who will return 
from the mire of the trenches and the nightmare of 
high explosives, but it will be the feeling of millions 
who remained behind to suffer, the mothers and the 
sisters who remained behind to suffer, and whose 
daily task it has been to scan the casualty lists in 
the newspapers. I am sure this war has burnt into 
the souls of all this lesson, which perhaps we never 
should have learned otherwise, the lesson that so 
far as it is possible in human power this thing 
should never be tolerated again. Now I think it 
is very important that there should be this natural 
condition created for a better order of things — the 
strong feeling, that is to say, that a state of affairs 
such as we have drifted to in our present civilisa- 
tion should never be allowed again. And when 
Europe rises from her sick bed in a long period 
of convalescence, as no doubt she will have to do, 
the germs of many good ideas will be able to de- 
velop in her, and let it be our effort to see that 
among those germs none will develop more 
strongly and more vigorously than this idea of 
peace which we are here this afternoon to foster. 

But I feel sure that this war has done something 
more than merely create this desire, this will to 
peace — this war has carried us to fundamentals, 
and that is a very important matter. In recent 
years we have had quite enough talk of peace and 
all the paraphernalia of peace. We have had 



60 WAR-TIME SPEECHES 

Hague Conferences; we have had peace treaties in 
large numbers. Our experience has been that 
whilst we were talking of peace, whilst we 
were at those conferences, whilst we were 
plastering the world with peace treaties, all 
the time the real danger was growing; all the 
time the war spirit was rising; all the time there 
was this arming in the dark, and this scheming 
which has at last broken out in this great conflict 
over the world. I think that the war has shown 
us that there is the very greatest danger in merely 
believing in paper and in institutions, and what we 
want to see brought about is not merely agree- 
ments between the nations, but we must have this 
change in the hearts of men; we must have this 
foundation in the hearts of men which will be a 
good basis for any agreements to rest on, other- 
wise these agreements and these institutions will 
be so many scraps of paper again. I think this 
war has carried us deep down to the bedrock of 
honesty and sincerity on which alone any lasting 
institutions for mankind can be built up. I have 
laboured this point because I think it is very im- 
portant. I think there is always a temptation for 
reformers to believe in paper and machinery. We 
fight so hard to achieve anything that when we 
have it in black and white we are apt to think we 
have attained our end. When we have a law on 
the statute book we think we have carried our 
reform, and then we fold our hands and we allow 
the thing to go by itself. And thereafter it often 
goes wrong. 
This war has taught us that we are dealing not 



A LEAGUE OF NATIONS 61 

merely with institutions, or with treaties, or with 
laws, but that we have to deal with something far 
more serious. If there is to be peace in future in 
the world, then there must be created as a basis 
for it all a strong, healthy, sound public opinion; 
a public opinion which will be the best guarantee 
of peace, which will see that Governments are kept 
in order and that diplomats are kept in order. And 
it is only in proportion as that result is achieved 
that we can have any reasonable confidence that 
there will be peace in the world in the future. I 
think that is the first and the most important con- 
dition of future peace. 

Now I mention what occurs to me as the second 
condition, also very important, and that is that at 
the end of this war we must conclude a good peace, 
because I do not see how you are going to have a 
perpetual peace, or the chance of perpetual peace, 
in future if this war is going to be ended like so 
many other wars as a mere patchwork compromise 
between various conflicting interests. The war has 
carried us to the depths, let us build from the 
depths. It is only when we have, as the result of 
this war and of the peace treaty that will follow it, 
the establishment of the principle that nations will 
decide their own fate, that there will be the free 
consent of nations about their own destiny and 
their own disposal — it is only then that it will be 
possible to talk about the maintenance of peace 
in the future. The subject is very difficult, and I 
am not going to discuss peace terms this afternoon. 
This is not the place, nor am I the person, to do 
so. But I can well understand that one of the 



62 WAR-TIME SPEECHES 

most important conditions of future peace will be 
a peace treaty which will be a satisfactory conclu- 
sion of this war, a conclusion which will establish 
that nations will no longer as in former years be 
disposed of by alien statesmen and Governments; 
that they will not be parcelled and chopped up 
so as to be divided among the big Powers of the 
world; that they shall have the chance to decide 
\ their own fate. On that basis alone — on that basis 
j of the national — will you be able to build the 
| system of the supernational, the international, 
\ which we are aiming at. I am sure it is only on 
! this basis of the free consent of nations, on this 
good sound national basis, that the proper inter- 
national, supernational order which we are aiming 
at can possibly be built up in the future. 

The third condition of lasting peace has been 
stated by Lord Bryce, and that is that in some 
form or other we must bring about a league or a 
union of nations with some common organ of con- 
sultation on all vital issues. Of course the matter 
is extremely difficult, and I am not, as I have said, 
in a position to dogmatise, and in my own mind 
I am not clear as to the best course to pursue. I 
can quite well see that we may fail in our object 
if we start with too elaborate or too ambitious a 
scheme. The subject is enormously difficult, and 
you can by trying to achieve too much fail in 
achieving anything at all, and I must honestly con- 
fess that all the schemes that I have heard of so 
far have failed to carry conviction to my mind that 
they are practical and that they will achieve the 
objects we have in view. I would favour some- 



A LEAGUE OF NATIONS 63 

thing more elastic, something more flexible, some- 
thing which will be capable of adapting itself to 
the very complex circumstances which arise from 
time to time in our complex European relations, 
and it is perhaps possible in that way to achieve 
more real good. Now I would throw out a sug- 
gestion here that the time has come, especially now 
that America is also in this war, when more ample 
consideration should be given to the details of the 
subject. I know a great literature has already 
gathered round this subject of the common institu- 
tions, the common organs for a League of Nations. 
But I am sure the matter is more difficult than has 
been shown in any book that I have read on the 
subject, and I would throw out the suggestion 
that the time has come when an Anglo-American 
Committee should be appointed to go thoroughly 
into it. As Lord Bryce has pointed out, a great 
deal of consideration has been given to the subject 
in America. America has been so far from the 
danger that she has built up an ideal in the clouds, 
whereas here in Europe we labour in the trough 
of the sea. America has got there too now, and if 
we could now bring together not only the idealists, 
but also practical men, men of experience, men who 
know the difficult ways of the world and the bad 
ways of the world — if we could bring them to- 
gether in a committee to thrash out a detailed 
scheme, it would be possible to have something 
more practical than anything we have yet seen 
on this subject, which might be invaluable when 
the time for peace negotiations arrives. 
I throw out this suggestion of an Anglo- 



64 WAR-TIME SPEECHES 

American Committee as one that is worthy of con- 
sideration. 

There remains another condition which Lord 
Bryce has referred to, and which is of the 
essence of the scheme before us — the condition, 
namely, that in any arrangement for future 
peace there should be at the back of it some 
sanction, some force — otherwise it remains merely 
talk, otherwise it remains simply a vision. A 
nation which has got off the rails, or intends to 
get off the rails, must know that in the last resort 
the League of Nations against her are going to 
use force, and are going to force her on the right 
rails if she is not going willingly to come back. 
It is not merely sufficient for a conference to meet 
from time to time like an Areopagus to discuss 
questions, but there must be a union which has 
force behind it and which is bound to use that force 
when the occasion arises. What force has to be 
used, and in what form or measure it is to be used, 
that, of course, is a very difficult question. You 
know the plan this Society and also the American 
Society favours is of a more limited character, and 
would apply force not to prevent war, but to en- 
sure consultation; to ensure inquiry and to afford 
a certain time for consideration and inquiry and 
for a decision to be arrived at. That is the only 
part which is really sanctioned in the present scheme. 
It is another question what sort of sanction ought 
to be applied. Ought nations to go to war at once 
if it is necessary to keep the peace, or should they 
go in for a more limited application of force, like 
a financial boycott or a blockade of communica- 



A LEAGUE OF NATIONS 65 

tions, or a pacific blockade or something of the 
kind? These are all questions of the greatest 
difficulty which might be threshed out carefully 
in an international committee such as I have 
suggested. 

There remains another question not touched 
upon in our programme, which I also consider of 
the most vital importance, and that is the question 
of disarmament. It is a very difficult question — 
more difficult than any other aspect of the subject, 
but from many points of view the most important. 
It is no use trying to prevent war when nations 
are armed to the teeth. If Governments are 
allowed with impunity to prepare for war over a 
long process of years, to consolidate all their re- 
sources on a military basis with a view to making 
an attack such as we have seen in the present war, 
then inevitably you reach a point when not even 
a League of Nations is sufficiently strong to with- 
stand the deluge. And however difficult — and it 
is a most difficult subject when it is thoroughly 
gone into — it seems to me that this matter also will 
have to be dealt with in some form or another and 
in some degree or another — namely, the devising 
of olans which will lead to the abolition or diminu- 

x 

tion of armaments and to less recourse being had 
by States to warlike preparations in future. 

There is one point more which I consider essen- 
tial in any scheme which can be considered work- 
able, and that is, you want not only a court of 
law, you want not only a police force, but you 
want a periodic conference or other institution 
which will be able to change the situation in 



66 WAR-TIME SPEECHES 

civilisation from time to time. The great weak- 
ness of the Holy Alliance that followed the 
Napoleonic wars was just this, that it was simply 
a court to maintain the status quo — to ensure that 
no change took place and that things were main- 
tained in that blissful state in which they were 
left by the Battle of Waterloo. 

You know that below that conservative crust 
of the Holy Alliance there were seething all 
the great forces which broke forth in the 
nineteenth century; and believe me that the 
position will be far worse after this war than 
after Waterloo. I am sure that we have 
entered into an era of great change and unsettle- 
ment and of movement in all directions. The 
foundation stones of society have been loosened, 
so to say, and you may be sure that for genera- 
tions to come there will be a great deal of un- 
settlement and change, if not always of progress, 
then of movement of some kind or another, and 
you want an institution which will not be merely 
of a conservative character with the object of main- 
taining and preserving peace, because there are 
sometimes interests that are more important than 
peace. You will get to a stage after this war when 
new creations will be more valuable than the pre- 
servation of the status quo. And such creations 
will have to be faced in the twentieth century even 
more probably than in previous centuries. And 
therefore you do not want a body that will merely 
pass judgment and see that it is carried out, but 
: one which will meet from time to time and revise 
' the situation and liberate those forces of progress 



A LEAGUE OF NATIONS 67 

which must have an outlet unless there is to be 
another convulsion. 

One more consideration — and it is this. I 
do not refer to this as a condition of any 
future peace treaty, but I think it is most 
important and essential that the fundamental 
provisions to safeguard peace in future should be 
included in the peace treaty itself which is made 
after this war. This war has not been fought, at 
any rate as far as we are concerned, for the purpose 
of gain or material interests. Millions of men 
have given their lives in this war, millions more 
are prepared to give their lives in this war in order 
to achieve a good peace and to ensure it for the 
future, and I think it would be the proper course' 
that the peace treaty which is concluded after this s 
war shall contain as an integral part of it the funda- 
mental provisions, not in detail, but in principle, 
which will safeguard the future peace of the world. 
If that is done, then this war will not have been 
fought in vain. If that is done, I am sure that out 
of the horrors and sorrows of this, probably the 
greatest tragedy of the world, will have been born 
a great hope for the future of the world, and in 
that way this peace treaty which will conclude this 
war will become a real Magna Charta for the 
whole of humanity hereafter. I hope the states- 
men of Europe at the conclusion of peace will 
regard the matter from that high standpoint. 



F 2 



FREEDOM 



A Speech delivered by General Smuts at the Guildhall 
on the occasion of the presentation to him of the Freedom 
of the City of London, May ist, 1917. 



FREEDOM 

I am very sensible of the great honour done me 
to-day. You have to-day enrolled my name among 
many of the greatest and most illustrious names 
in the history of your City and your people. 

I will not suppose that any merits of mine have 
justified this distinction, although I confess I am 
personally very proud and grateful for the action 
you have taken; and the people of South Africa, 
and especially the small people to whom I am 
proud to belong, will also feel very greatly pleased 
and honoured. Ten years ago you bestowed the 
great gift of your Freedom on my leader, General 
Botha, who has ever since, through sunshine and 
through storm, led the people of South Africa 
with a firm, wise, and kindly hand; under whose 
guidance the enmities and antagonisms of the past 
are receding, and a new nation is slowly but surely 
being built up in that great land- No one will 
be more pleased to-day at the honour you have 
done me than my old friend and comrade in arms, 
whose heavy task in far South Africa has pre- 
vented him from attending the Imperial War 
Cabinet on this occasion. I know your best 
wishes accompany him in his great work of states- 
manship. 

71 



72 WAR-TIME SPEECHES 

There is another reason why I especially value 
this honour you have conferred on me to-day. It 
is because of the traditions of your great City, and 
of the great and special part it has played in past 
centuries in the political history of this country. 
In the great historic struggles of this country in 
the past the City of London always was the bul- 
wark of liberty; the place of refuge to which 
oppressed liberty could flee — and never fled in vain. 
Throughout the seventeenth century, while the 
foundations of political liberty and Parliamentary 
Government were being laid in this country, the 
City of London stood forth as the most conspicuous 
champion against the Stuarts. The memories of 
Hampden and Pym, of Cromwell and Dutch 
William, will always remain inseparably associated 
with the traditions of your great City. Under your 
protection the foundations of free institutions were 
well and truly laid, and many generations have 
since continued the structure. You chose the prize 
of greatest value, and many others have been added 
to you since. 

Centuries of prosperity followed, in which you 
and the nation grew and flourished and became 
rich beyond the dreams of avarice. And people 
whispered that you had become corrupted with 
wealth, and soft; that the day of trial would find 
your leaders nerveless and yourselves wanting and 
unprepared. What was your answer? Your 
enemies forgot on what milk you had been nur- 
tured. Free men have the heart to do and dare 
anything. Without conscription or compulsion 
you raised millions of men; you transformed your 



FREEDOM 73 

industries from a peace to a war basis, and in the 
end you have become the financial, military, and 
moral mainstay of the Alliance. Such are the 
fruits of liberty in these islands. Freedom, like 
wisdom, is once more justified of her children. 

And beyond these islands? Of the sixty million 
white inhabitants of the British Empire one- 
quarter live beyond the seas. Scattered far away 
over the whole globe, apparently having no interest 
in the struggles and feuds of old Europe. Ger- 
many counted on their apathy, perhaps on their 
disruption. 

Yet see what they have done, and done quite 
voluntarily. And why have they made their mag- 
nificent effort ? Not to help the Mother Country, 
but to help the cause which is as much theirs as 
hers, the cause of Freedom, the desire of all nations 
to work out their own salvation, without coercion, 
without the terror inspired by an ever-growing, 
ever more insolent, threatening, and aggressive 
military autocracy. We shall never understand the 
real inwardness of the effort of the British Empire 
until we recognise that their fight is not for mere 
self-interest or mean, small issues, but for the 
greatest of all. It is because all realise that the 
greatest, most essential, and most fundamental 
interest of humanity is at stake, that the old cause 
for which millions have in all ages sacrificed their 
all, once again is in danger, it is for this that you 
witness to-day this spontaneous uprising, not only 
among the nations of the British Empire, but of 
the world. 

Why has America at last also joined in the con- 



74 WAR-TIME SPEECHES 

flict? Some say it is the submarine, and some sav 
it is Wilson; some say American honour has been 
hurt by Germany; and some say that America is 
afraid of standing alone and isolated after the war. 
It may be none or some or all of these things. But 
it is far more than all these. Slowly, painfully, the 
people of America have come to recognise and 
understand what really is at stake. They have 
come to realise that it is once more the old historic 
issue, that it is the same as their old case of George 
Washington versus George Rex, the same as the 
case between North and South, but now broadened 
so as to cover the whole world; the oldest and 
greatest of all issues which has been going on since 
the foundation of the world; the issue of freedom 
versus slavery, of democracy versus autocracy, 
of national self-government against Imperial 
despotism. You will find it all set forth with 
matchless skill and burning eloquence in President 
Wilson's great historic message. Just as we had 
no option in August, 19 14, so America has come 
to see that she had no option; unless freedom is 
once more to be endangered, not only in the old 
world, but also in the new; unless Russia was once 
more to be delivered over to the reaction; unless 
Germany herself had to be finally given up as lost 
for ever. And remember even the soul of Ger- 
many will have to be redeemed before the end! 
Do we not see how under the terrific strain of this 
struggle the bonds of the military despotism that 
have shackled that and other peoples are already 
beginning to snap as the end is approaching? 
For the end is coming nearer. There are difficult 



FREEDOM 75 

weeks and months ahead of us, difficult, anxious, 
dangerous. The spirit of our armies at the front 
is magnificent in its confidence and determination. 
Let the spirit of the nation be great enough to 
match that of its armies. Let us be neither too 
elated by victory nor too much depressed by ill- 
fortune. Let us be patient, constant, and prepared 
for any sacrifices. Remember greater forces are 
fighting for us than our armies or the armies of 
our Allies. The unseen forces are being mobilised 
all over Christendom by German outrages and 
even deeper causes. The spirit of freedom is on 
the wing, the Great Creative Spirit is once more 
moving among the nations in their unspeakable 
anguish. Let us be strong and confident with the 
inspiration which comes from the cause for which 
we are fighting, and when the end comes — and it 
cannot now be so far off — let us in the hour of 
victory recognise that it was not so much the valour 
and strength of our armies, but far greater and 
deeper forces that have carried us to victory. 

I have laid emphasis on the cause of freedom for 
which we are fighting because I feel sure that in 
the grave dangers ahead of us the clear conscious- 
ness of that cause alone will strengthen us to hold 
on unflinchingly. And the circumstances of my 
own life have made me realise perhaps more than 
most people what that means, for I have seen what 
strength a people can derive from the causes for 
which it is fighting. In my day and country 1 
have seen freedom go under, and I have seen 
freedom rise again. And I have seen the same 
beaten people rise again to fight for the same 



76 WAR-TIME SPEECHES 

freedom, but no longer for themselves alone, but 
for the whole of the world. 

And the result of their labours is written large 
all over Africa south of the Equator. 

And to-day I see another vision. From the 
ancient Freedom of the City of London to the 
Freedom of Humanity in future! May that 
vision guide us through all vicissitudes to the end. 



THE FUTURE OF SOUTH AND 
CENTRAL AFRICA 



A Speech delivered by General Smuts at the Savoy Hotel, 
London, on the occasion of the " South African Dinner " 
given in his honour on May 22nd, 1917. 

The health of the guest was proposed by Lord Selborne, 
who presided. 



THE FUTURE OF SOUTH AND 
CENTRAL AFRICA 

I am deeply grateful to you for the recep- 
tion which you have given me here to-night. 
I am thankful to you. Lord Selborne, for what 
you have said, even for the Platonic myth you 
have given us and for the conversation with the 
mythical lady. Your words to-night carry me back 
to that period in our history when I was serving 
under you and was a fellow-labourer with you, 
and what will probably remain the greatest creative 
epoch in the history of South Africa. And to- 
night again you are Chairman at this memorable 
meeting. 

The various South African societies, together 
with the Imperial Institute, have combined in order 
to do me this honour, and I am very glad to have 
you all together on this occasion. 1 know that there 
are many here to-night who have, at one time or 
another, differed from me. Sometimes the differ- 
ences have been very acute, but to-night all these 
differences have been swallowed up and forgotten 
in the great constructive tasks in which we are 
all engaged. It is a matter of great gratification 
to me to think that after all, notwithstanding 



80 WAR-TIME SPEECHES 

all those differences in the past, you can say to- 
night to me, " You have not done so badly after 
all." This function, of all the various functions 
I have so far attended, appeals most to me, be- 
cause it is really not in honour of me, but in honour 
of that far-away dear land, which most of us have 
served and with which most of us have been 
associated in the past. To-night we are really 
met together here as members of the South African 
family. Some born into it, some married into it, 
some old servants who have grown grey in her 
hard service and who have given the best years 
of their lives to that service — here we can all sit 
together, forgetting Europe, forgetting the storms 
raging outside, and our minds can travel back to 
the sun-filled spaces of Southern Africa, to its 
amazing history, and its immense tasks. A great 
historian has said " On those whom the gods love 
they lavish infinite joys and infinite sorrows." On 
that principle surely South Africa must be a 
special favourite of the gods. She has known joys 
and sorrows; she has known the deepest abasement 
and she has known the highest exaltation. The 
history of South Africa is in many respects one of 
the true and great romances in modern history. 
One of the most wonderful episodes in that 
romance you will probably have the opportunity 
soon to see in a cinematograph film which will be 
produced here in London called " Winning a Con- 
tinent," in which scenes from the great Boer trek 
into the interior are represented. I hope you will 
all see it. 

When I look around to-night and I see all 



SOUTH AND CENTRAL AFRICA 81 

who are sitting here at this table, I feel, and 
you all feel, that we are lifted out of the world 
of commonplace into a strange world. We feel 
that whatever the past has been, whatever mistakes 
we have made — and we have all made mistakes — 
whatever services we have been able to render to 
our South Africa, a kind Providence has intervened 
and has woven all those mistakes and all those 
services into a strange and wonderful texture which 
we call the history of South Africa and of which 
we are very proud. When we look at that won- 
derful history we are all cheered and encouraged 
to move forward in the hope that as our task has 
not been too difficult for us in the past it may not 
prove entirely beyond us in the future. 

There are very grave questions before South 
Africa, and these questions will probably increase 
in magnitude after this war. Now the Ten Plagues 
are being poured out over Europe in this war, and 
they will be followed by the Exodus in due course. 
You will see very large numbers of people, after 
this war, sick of the Old World and looking to the 
young countries for a new home where they may 
find peace. 1 m sure that many of you will find 
in our lar^e country, our wide spaces, just that 
repose for body and soul that you desire. We look 
forward to great times, to great developments in 
South Africa, and it will be the task of our Govern- 
ments in South Africa to make the best use of the 
unique opportunities for a forward move that will 
be presented by the times that will follow the war. 

But in South Africa we always feel that there 
is something more. With us it is never a question 

G 



82 WAR-TIME SPEECHES 

of merely material progress and of prosperity } 
although we are always very eager to have those 
good things too; we always feel that under our 
peculiar historical and racial conditions there are 
very large political problems in the background 
which always press for solution. And that is what 
gives a profound interest to life in South Africa, 
We have made very great progress in recent years. 
If you remember that it was within seven years 
of the Boer War that we had all the British 
Colonies of South Africa united in one great Union 
you will see how great and rapid that progress 
has been. But although we have achieved 
political union, our aim has always been far 
greater; we have aimed not only at political union, 
but also at national unity; and when you have to 
deal with very hard-headed races, such as our 
people in South Africa, both English and Dutch, 
you can well understand that it takes more than 
seven years to bring about that consummation. 
We have grave difficulties in this respect. We 
have different racial strains and different political 
tendencies. We have people in South Africa who 
prefer isolation, who prefer to stand aside from 
the great currents that are carrying South Africa 
to her new and greater destiny. These are not 
merely Dutch, many of them are English. We 
have English fellow-citizens who will always re- 
main English, to whom even the sunshine and the 
wide spaces of South Africa are not sufficient to 
bring about the great transformation of soul. We 
look forward patiently in such cases to the next 
generation. We have also a large section of my 



SOUTH AND CENTRAL AFRICA 83 

own people, the Dutch people in South Africa, who 
think that the best policy for them is to stand aside 
and to remain isolated. They think that in that 
way they will be better able to preserve their lan- 
guage, their traditions, and their national type, 
and that they will in that way not be swallowed up 
and be submerged by the new currents. They 
point to the precedent of Canada, where French- 
Canadians are also standing aside from the general 
current of Canadian life and national development 
for the same reasons. Now, you know, that is the 
issue which is being fought out now in South 
Africa, and has been fought out in recent years 
more acutely than ever before. The policy General 
Botha and his associates have stood for is that we 
must have national unity in South Africa as the 
one true basis of future stability and strength — 
and that national unity is entirely consistent with 
the preservation of our language, our traditions, 
our cultural interests, and all that is dear to us 
in our past. The view we have taken is this, that 
the different elements in our white populations 
ought really to be used to build up a stronger and 
more powerful nation than would have been pos- 
sible if we had consisted purely of one particular 
strain. All great Imperial peoples really are a 
mixture of various stocks. Your own history is 
one of the completest proofs of that doctrine, and 
it is only in recent years that this remarkable doc- 
trine of the pure race has come into vogue, and 
largely in Germany. The man who has preached 
that doctrine most eloquently is a Germanised 
Englishman, Houston Chamberlain. The doc- 

G 2 



84 WAR-TIME SPEECHES 

trine is to the effect that the governing races of the 

world are pure races, and that they simply debase 

themselves and become degenerate if mixed with 

alien blood. They must remain pure, and in so 

far as they do so they will play a great part in the 

world. It is more than hinted at that the German 

race must guide the world because it is one of 

these pure races. What arrant nonsense! We 

do not pretend in South Africa to listen to these 

syren voices. We want to create a blend out of 

the various nationalities and to create a new South 

African nation out of our allied racial stocks, and 

if we succeed in doing that we shall achieve a new 

nationality embracing and harmonising our various 

traits and blending them all into a richer national 

• 
type than could otherwise have been achieved. 

The ideal of national unity means a continuous 

effort towards better relations, towards mutual 

respect and forbearance, towards co-operation, and 

that breadth of view and character which will be 

the most potent instrument for dealing with our 

other problems. Although in South Africa our 

national progress is marked by the ox-wagon and 

not by the train or aeroplane, I am sure in the end 

we shall achieve success and a new nationhood. 

And this is all the more important because in 

South Africa we are not merely a white man's 

country. Our problem of white racial unity is 

being solved in the midst of the black environment 

in South Africa. Whether we shall succeed in 

solving that other larger question of the black 

man's future depends on many factors on which no 

one could feel very much assurance at present. 



SOUTH AND CENTRAL AFRICA 85 

We know that on the African Continent at various 
times there have been attempts at civilisation. 
We read of a great Saracen civilisation in 
Central Africa, and of the University of Timbuc- 
too, to which students came from other parts of 
the world. Rhodesia also shows signs of former 
civilisation. Where are those civilisations now? 
They have all disappeared, and barbarism once 
more rules over the land and makes the thoughtful 
man nervous about the white man's future in 
Southern Africa. There are many people in South 
Africa — and not very foolish people either — who 
do not feel certain that our white experiment will 
be a permanent success, or that we shall ever suc- 
ceed in making a white man's land of Southern 
Africa; but, at any rate, we mean to press on with 
the experiment. It has now been in progress for 
some two hundred and fifty years, as you know, 
and perhaps the way we have set about it may 
be the right way. Former civilisations in Africa 
have existed mostly for the purpose of exploiting 
the native populations, and in that way, and prob- 
ably also through intermixture of blood carried in 
them the seeds of decay. We have started by 
creating a new white base in South Africa, and 
to-day we are in a position to move forward 
towards the North and the civilisation of the 
African Continent. Our problem is a very diffi- 
cult one, however; quite unique in its way. In 
the United States there is a similar problem of 
black and white with the negro population. But 
there you have had an overwhelming white popu- 
lation with a smaller negro element in the midst 



86 WAR-TIME SPEECHES 

of it. In South Africa the situation is reversed. 
There you have an overwhelming black population 
with a small white population which has got a 
footing there and which has been trying to make 
that footing: secure for more than two centuries. 

You will therefore understand that a problem 
like that is not only uncertain in its ultimate pros- 
pects, but is most difficult in the manner that it 
should be dealt with. Much experience has been 
gained, and there are indications that we have 
come to some certain results. You remember how 
some Christian missionaries, who went to South 
Africa in the first half of the nineteenth century 
in their full belief in human brotherhood, pro- 
ceeded to marry native wives to prove the faith 
that was in them. We have gained sufficient ex- 
perience since then to smile at that point of view. 

* v With us there are certain axioms now in regard 
to the relations of white and black; and the prin- 
cipal one is "no intermixture of blood between the 
two colours." It is probably true that earlier civil- 
isations have largely failed because that principle 
was never recognised, civilising races being rapidly 
submerged in the quicksands of the African blood. 
It has now become an accepted axiom in our 
dealings with the natives that it is dishonourable 

I to mix white and black blood. 

We have settled another axiom, and that is that 
in all our dealings with the natives we must build 
our practice on what I believe Lord Cromer has 
called the granite bedrock of the Christian moral 
code. Honesty, fair-play, justice, and the ordinary 
Christian virtues must be the basis of all our rela- 



SOUTH AND CENTRAL AFRICA 87 

tions with the natives. We don't always practise 
them. We don't always practise that exalted doc- 
trine, but the vast, bulk of the white population 
in South Africa believe sincerely in that doctrine 
as correct and true; they are convinced that they 
must stick to the fundamental Christian morality 
if they want to do their duty to the natives and 
make a success of their great country. Of course, 
this doctrine applies to other countries besides 
South Africa. If you ask me what is wrong with 
Europe — although no wise man should express an 
opinion on such a great matter — I should say 
the moral basis in Europe, the bedrock of the 
Christian moral code, has become undermined and 
can no longer support all that superstructure of 
economic and industrial prosperity which the last 
century has built up on it, and the vast whole is 
now sagging. The same argument applies much 
more to the natives of Africa. Natives have the 
simplest minds, understand only the simplest ideas 
or ideals, and are almost animal-like in the sim- 
plicity of their minds and ways. If we want to 
make a success of our native policy in South Africa 
we shall have to proceed on the simplest moral 
lines and on that basis of the Christian moral code. 
I think we are all agreed on those two points — on 
what I have called the racial and moral axioms. 

I wish we had made more progress and also dis- 
covered some political axiom and knowledge how 
to deal politically with our immense native prob- 
lem. But although in this regard nothing can be 
taken as axiomatic, we have gained a great deal 
of experience in our history, and there is now 



88 WAR-TIME SPEECHES 

shaping in South Africa a policy which is becoming 
expressed in our institutions which may have 
very far-reaching effects in the future civilisation 
of the African Continent. We have realised that 
political ideas which apply to our white civilisa- 
tion largely do not apply to the administration of 
native affairs. To apply the same institutions on 
an equal basis to white and black alike does not 
lead to the best results, and so a practice has grown 
up in South Africa of creating parallel institutions 
— giving the natives their own separate institu- 
tions on parallel lines with institutions for whites. 
It may be that on those parallel lines we may yet be 
able to solve a problem which may otherwise be 
insoluble. More than twenty years ago, as many 
of you remember, an experiment in native self- 
government was begun by Cecil Rhodes in the old 
Cape Colony which gave local institutions to the 
natives in the Glen Grey reserve. That principle 
has been extended over a large part of the old 
Transkeian territories, and so successful has it been 
that when we came to framing the Act of Union 
an appendix was added about the future adminis- 
tration of the Protectorates when they should be- 
come incorporated into the Union. This appendix 
was largely the work of our chairman, Lord Sel- 
borne. He fought with extraordinary tenacity for 
that appendix, and I am not sure, although I did 
not see the importance of the matter in those days, 
whether in the distant future the South Africa Act 
will not be remembered as much for its appendix as 
for its principal contents. This appendix laid 
down that the native territories in South Africa 



SOUTH AND CENTRAL AFRICA 89 

should be governed apart from the Parliamentary 
institutions of the Union and on different lines 
which would achieve the principle of native self- 
government. Subsequently Commissions have been 
appointed in South Africa to inquire into native 
questions, and more and more the trend of opinion 
has hardened in the same direction. We have felt 
more and more that if we are to solve our native 
question it is useless to try to govern black and 
white in the same system, to subject them to the 
same institutions of government and legislation, j 
They are different not only in colour but in minds I 
and in political capacity, and their political institu- 
tions should be different, while always proceeding 
on the basis of self-government. One very im- 
portant Commission had, I believe, Sir Godfrey 
Lagden as chairman, and as a result of that and 
other Commissions we have now legislation before 
the Parliament of the Union in which an attempt 
is made to put into shape these ideas I am talking 
of, and to create all over South Africa, wherever 
there are any considerable native communities, 
independent self-governing institutions for them. 
Instead of mixing up black and white in the old 
haphazard way, which instead of lifting up the 
black degraded the white, we are now trying to 
lay down a policy of keeping them apart as much 
as possible in our institutions. In land ownership 
settlement and forms of government we are trying 
to keep them apart, and in that way laying down 
in outline a general policy which it may take a 
hundred years to work out, but which in the end 
may be the solution of our native problem. Thus 



9 o WAR-TIME SPEECHES 

in South Africa you will have in the long run large 
areas cultivated by blacks and governed by blacks, 
where they will look after themselves in all their 
forms of living and development, while in the rest of 
the country you will have your white communities, 
which will govern themselves separately according 
to the accepted European principles. The natives 
will, of course, be free to go and to work in the 
white areas, but as far as possible the administra- 
tion of white and black areas will be separated, 
and such that each will be satisfied and developed 
according to its own proper lines. This is the 
attempt which we are making now in South Africa 
to solve the juxtaposition of white and black in 
the same country, and although the principles 
underlying our legislation could not be considered 
in any way axiomatic, I am sure that we are 
groping towards the right lines, which may in the 
end tend to be the solution of the most difficult 
problem confronting us. 

As I have already said, we have started in 
previous times to civilise Africa from the North. 
All these attempts at civilisation from the North 
have failed. We now try to proceed from the 
other end — from South Africa, We have built 
up a stable white community in the south of the 
Continent and given them a training for two 
hundred years, and they have learned the ways of 
Africa, which are not the ways of other parts of 
the world. And now we are ready to go forward, 
and, as you know, in the last few decades enormous 
progress has already been made in this expansion 
towards the North. All our people in South 



SOUTH AND CENTRAL AFRICA 91 

Africa, English as well as Dutch, have taken part 
in this great movement towards the North, which 
is proceeding ever farther, and the time is coming 
when it will be almost a misnomer to speak of 
" South " Africa, because the northern limits of our 
civilisation will have gone so far that it will be 
almost impossible to use the word " South " any 
more except in reminder of our original starting- 
point. 

Great developments have taken place not only in 
Southern Africa, but in Central Africa in our day. 
You will remember that only fifty or sixty years 
ago Central Africa was a place for the explorer and 
discoverer, a land of mystery, of pigmies and other 
wonders of which we read in the books of Stanley 
and others. In a couple of decades Central Africa 
has marched right into the centre of world politics, 
and to-night in this great assembly we are not only 
interested in Southern Africa, but also those other 
enormous territories further north which our troops 
from South Africa and other parts of the Empire 
have conquered and occupied. What the future 
of that country will be no one knows. I must 
say that my experience in East Africa has 
opened my eyes to many very serious dangers 
that threaten the future not only of Southern 
Africa, but also of Europe. We have seen, what 
we had never known before, what enormously 
valuable military material lay in the Black Con- 
tinent. You are aware of the great German scheme 
which existed before the war, and which no doubt 
is still in the background of many minds in Ger- 
many, of creating a great Central African Empire 



92 WAR-TIME SPEECHES 

which would embrace not only the Cameroons and 
East Africa, but also the Portuguese Colonies and 
the Congo — an extensive area which would have a 
very large population and would not only be one 
of the most valuable tropical parts of the world, 
but in which it would be possible to train one of 
the most powerful black armies of the world. We 
were not aware of the great military value of the 
natives until this war. This war has been an eye- 
opener in many new directions. It will be a 
serious question for the statesmen of the Empire 
and Europe, whether they are going to allow a 
state of affairs like that to be possible, and to 
become a menace not only to Africa, but perhaps 
to Europe itself. I hope that one of the results 
of this war will be some arrangement or conven- 
tion among the nations interested in Central Africa 
by which the military training of natives in that 
area will be prevented, as we have prevented it in 
South Africa. It can well be foreseen that armies 
may yet be trained there, which under proper lead- 
ing might prove a danger to civilisation itself. I 
hope that will be borne in mind when the day for 
the settlement in Africa comes up for considera- 
tion. 

You will have further questions in regard to 
the territorial settlement of Central Africa which 
will follow the war. We are now, after the con- 
quest of the German Colonies, in the happy posi- 
tion of having a through land route from Egypt 
to the Cape. We are in the secure position of 
having no danger on the Atlantic seaboard or on 
the Indian seaboard to our very essential sea com- 



SOUTH AND CENTRAL AFRICA 93 

munications as an Empire. What will happen to 
these communications after the settlement will 
depend on that settlement itself, but I hope it will 
be borne in mind that East Africa gives us not 
only this through land communication from one 
end of the Continent to the other, but that East 
Africa also ensures to us the safety of the sea route 
around the Cape and the sea route through the 
Red Sea to the East. It is a matter of gratifica- 
tion to us South Africans here to-night that South 
African troops have taken such a large and leading 
share in securing these extremely valuable results. 
I sincerely hope that, whatever settlement is come 
to, these larger considerations which I have referred 
to will be borne in mind. 

We shall always have a difficult question not only 
in Central, but in Southern Africa. Unlike other 
British Dominions, our future as a white civilisa- 
tion is not assured for the reasons which I have 
given. Many thoughtful people are in doubt 
about our future, and in any case no cheap and 
easy victory will be scored in South Africa. We 
know we have tremendous problems to contend 
with. We know we have tremendous tasks before 
us, and in dealing with these problems and in 
trying to fulfil these tasks one generation of South 
Africans after another will brace its nerves and 
strengthen its intellect and broaden its mind and 
character. Although these difficulties may seem to 
us, and indeed are, grave perils to our future, I 
trust that in the long run these difficulties may 
prove a blessing in disguise, and may prove to 
have afforded the training school for a large- 



94 WAR-TIME SPEECHES 

minded, broad-minded, magnanimous race, capable 
not only of welding together different racial ele- 
ments into a new and richer national type, but 
capable of dealing as no other white race in history 
has ever dealt with the question of the relations 
between black and white. 

Our future is difficult and uncertain, and I 
would ask you — here in the centre of the 
Empire — to bear in mind that we in South 
Africa are dealing with enormous problems on 
which you and we do not always see eye to 
eye. But when differences of opinion do occur 
from time to time, I ask you generously to bear 
in mind that we in South Africa are dealing, as 
well as we can, with as great problems as you are 
ever called upon to face in your more complex 
society. 



RUSSIA 

THE NEED OF DISCIPLINE AND 

ORGANISATION 



A Speech delivered by General Smuts at the Russian 
Exhibition at the Grafton Galleries on May 30th, 191 7. 



RUSSIA 

THE NEED OF DISCIPLINE AND 

ORGANISATION 

You often see in the papers, and no doubt you 
hear privately expressed, a concern about the situa- 
tion in Russia. These expressions are sometimes 
distorted and, far away, they are misunderstood, 
with the result that our very best friends in Russia 
are under the impression that people in England 
and other democratic countries are critical of what 
has been happening in Russia. So far from being 
critical, our sympathy is almost too deep for words. 
These expressions of concern are due entirely to 
the solicitude we feel for the Russian people in 
the trials through which they are passing, and to 
the solicitude we also feel for everybody in this 
terrible crisis. I have heard nowhere in England 
in the few months that I have been here, and since 
the Russian Revolution, a word from anybody 
tending to minimise the enormous importance of 
the events that have transpired in Russia. Every- 
body here, all classes of the community, are im- 
pressed with the fact that this is probably the 
greatest event in the whole of the war. If nothing 
further were to happen and no other result but this 



98 WAR-TIME SPEECHES 

Revolution, then posterity will say that this war 
has not been in vain. 

Two recent events seem to me to put this enor- 
mous panorama of events in the right setting — 
the revolution in Russia and the coming in of the 
United States. If these two events had not hap- 
pened, then I think there would not have been a 
true and correct perspective for this vast drama 
which is now being enacted. If America had not 
come in, it would have been an Old- World busi- 
ness, and any peace which would have followed 
in due course, however good, however democratic, 
would have been an Old- World peace, an Old- 
World arrangement. But America has come in; the 
New has come in to redress the balance of the Old 
World; and in that way we have the assurance that 
the peace that will come eventually — and we pray 
that it will come as early as possible — will be a 
world peace; will not be merely a European peace, 
but a world peace embracing all the nations and all 
the democracies of the world. 

With regard to the other event, which is possibly 
of even greater importance — the Revolution in 
Russia — this seems to me to bring about an 
achievement, a result, which it otherwise might have 
taken another fifty years or a century of tragedy 
and of suffering to have brought about. The enor- 
mous strain of this war has broken the bonds of 
the Russian people, and once more they stand free 
and able to direct their own destinies. I can 
assure the Russian people that there is not in this 
country a man, a woman, or a child that does not 
sympathise profoundly with them, that does not 



RUSSIA 99 

rejoice in the heartiest manner with Russia in the 
events that have taken place there recently. 

I remember that the Germans have always held 
up the Russians as a barbarous Power. They have 
always used this argument even against England. 
They say, " See what you are doing now. You are 
a part of the great Teutonic race; you are a civilised 
Power, not so highly civilised as we are, it is true; 
you are lagging behind somewhat. At any rate, we 
will give you the benefit of the doubt, and call you 
a civilised branch of the great Teutonic race. See 
what you are doing. You are helping the degener- 
ate Latins of Southern Europe, France, and Italy; 
and on the other hand you are helping that barbar- 
ous power of Russia which can only be a danger to 
European peace and civilisation." That is the 
German argument. They look upon the Russians 
as barbarians, and upon the Russian power as a 
threat to the future of civilisation. 

I have heard these arguments often in private 
conversation, and read them in books and in 
articles, but what is the truth? What was the 
state of affairs one hundred years ago under Napo- 
leon? Who saved Europe then? Was it not the 
" barbarous " power of Russia ? When Prussia was 
under the heel of France, and the Prussian King a 
satellite of Napoleon, who saved Europe and de- 
stroyed Napoleon's army? Russia on that occa- 
sion, as on previous occasions, came in to save the 
world, and our hope and prayer in this great 
struggle is that Russia will do it once more. We 
wish the people of Russia well. We look forward 
to the day when that enormous Power which is 

H 2 



ioo WAR-TIME SPEECHES 

now seething in the revolutionary crisis through 
which it is passing will concentrate itself, organise 
itself, and discipline itself, and then march again 
at the head of civilisation, and help to break 
down this much-vaunted German Kultur, which 
is now the real threat to the civilisation of the 
world. 

There is another point. Russia has always and 
consistently fought Turkey — that barbarous Power 
which has been trying to overwhelm Christendom 
from the South. All the other European Powers 
have anything but a clean record in this matter; 
even we in England have coquetted from time to 
time with the " bloody Turk." Russia has never 
done it. Russia has always been true to her in- 
sight, her instincts, and she has gone for the Turk 
whenever she has seen him. In this war nobody 
has struck harder blows at the Turk than Russia, 
and it is our wish and our hope and our trust that 
Russia will continue to bear her share in smashing 
this power of the Turk, because if there is one 
result we want to achieve in this war it is that the 
Turk shall never tyrannise any more over any 
Christian population. We have nothing against 
the Turks in their homeland, but we must see, and 
Russia must help us in bringing it about, that this 
tyranny with which Turkey has ruled over Chris- 
tian nations must cease for ever. 

One of the results of the war will be the freeing 
and liberation of all the peoples who have groaned 
for hundreds of years under Turkish power. That 
has been the traditional policy of Russia, and we 
hope and trust she will remain true to that policy, 



RUSSIA 101 

and will see that no Christian nation is left under 
the rule of Turkey at the end of this war. 

Autocratic Russia has played a great part in the 
history of the world, but I am sure there is a far 
greater future still before free democratic Russia. 
But, of course, young liberty is like young wine — 
it mounts to your head sometimes, and liberty, as 
a force in the world, requires organisation and dis- 
cipline. Autocracy is usually organised, but free- 
dom is never properly organised. It acts by itself 
and its own internal impulse, but in times like these 
there must be much more than merely idealistic 
impulse. With the impulse of freedom — a noble 
sensation of freedom, moving through a great 
people — there must be organisation, and there must 
be discipline. I feel sure that is what the Russian 
people are determined to achieve. They are learn- 
ing to-day the greatest lesson of life — that to be 
free you must work very hard and school yourself 
to self-discipline. They have the sensation of 
freedom, now that their bonds and shackles are 
gone, and no doubt they feel the joy, the intoxica- 
tion, of their new experience; but they are living 
in a world which is not governed by formulas, 
however cleverly devised, but in a world of brute 
force, and unless that world is smashed even liberty 
itself will suffer and perish. 

Germany, of course, is prepared to do anything. 
She will swallow all the nice formulas which 
Russian democracy or any other democracy 
may devise, and she will swallow Russia and 
democracy as well. She is clever enough to 
do that. She sits to-day with Belgium, Serbia, 



102 WAR-TIME SPEECHES 

most of Rumania, and twenty-five millions of 
Russians, and people who formerly belonged to 
the Russian Empire ; she has swallowed an enormous 
portion of Europe. Certainly, no word that official 
Germany has spoken leads us to infer that she will 
disgorge all these without being forced to do so. 
The official words spoken by the German Chan- 
cellor are all to this effect — they are prepared to 
make peace, longing for peace, thinking of peace, 
and praying for peace on the basis of the German 
victories, that is, on the basis of what they have 
bitten off and are now trying to digest in Central 
Europe and in other parts of Europe. Such a peace 
will never happen. You may talk about peace with- 
out annexations or indemnities, but you must re- 
member you are talking to a people who will 
swallow every formula, and swallow you in the 
end if you are not careful. 

There is no doubt that this is a case for hard 
fighting. Germany, as Bismarck once said, is 
founded on blood and iron, and not on ideals and 
formulas; and what was brought about by blood 
and iron will have to be undone and smashed in 
the same way. Then only will it be possible for 
the Russian democracy, like other democracies in 
the world, to feel safety and security once more, 
and go towards the future with a feeling of optim- 
ism. I will therefore, while expressing the pro- 
foundest sympathy with our Russian comrades and 
the Russian people, say to them : Do not forget the 
others who are suffering. Do not forget Belgium, 

Belgium is crushed under the German heel to- 
day, but it is not of her choosing and her doing. 



RUSSIA 103 

The German Chancellor has himself admitted it was 
a sin that had been done, but they will never re- 
nounce the evil fruits of their victory unless forced 
to do so. I would appeal to our Russian brethren 
to remember Belgium. I have had occasion to see 
in other parts of the world what gallant efforts 
Belgium has been making. In East Africa and in 
Central Africa I saw some thousands of Belgian 
troops fighting, as it were, next door to me, fighting 
bravely and well and with the best results. As 
regards the Belgian people, not only the English, 
but all the other democracies in the world ought to 
stand by them to the very end for the services they 
have rendered ; and I am sure that nothing is further 
from the minds of the Russian democracy than to 
leave her Belgian ally in the lurch in the agony 
through which she is passing now. I am sure 
nothing is further from their minds, whatever 
formula may be for the moment devised in order to 
find a way to peace. 

Take again the case of Serbia. Serbia was the 
reason why Russia went to war. She was going to 
be crushed under the Austrian heel, and Russia said 
this shall not be allowed. Serbia has in that way 
become the occasion probably of the greatest move- 
ment for freedom the world has ever seen. Are we 
going to forget Serbia ? No ! We must stand by 
those little martyr peoples who have stood by the 
great causes of the world. If the great democracies 
of the world become tired, if they become faint, if 
they halt by the way, if they leave those little ones 
in the lurch, then they shall pay for it in future wars 
more bloody than human eye can foresee I am sure 



104 WAR-TIME SPEECHES 

we shall stand by those little ones. They have gone 
under, but we have not gone under. England and 
America, France and Russia, have not gone under, 
and we shall see them through, and shame on us if 
ever the least thought enters our minds of not 
seeing them through. 

I need not refer to the other smaller countries 
who have gone under, but we who are strong, we 
who have achieved power, have also the heart and 
courage to see it through, and to see that peace is 
made which shall bring a free world not only for 
the big but for the little ones. I am sure that in 
saying this I am expressing the thoughts and feel- 
ings of every Englishman and every Russian and 
every democrat in the world. 

You in this country have been accustomed for 
hundreds of years to democratic government. De- 
mocracy is in your blood, and organisation and 
discipline are part of your national culture. But 
other people are not as equally favoured as you in 
that respect. You have been divided off from the 
world, and you have been free to develop free insti- 
tutions and free modes of life which make you now 
the bulwark of liberty. Russia has not attained 
that position yet, and she is passing through this 
tremendous struggle of trying to create, during the 
greatest war that has ever been seen, institutions 
for her internal government, organisation, and 
discipline. 

I cannot too strongly impress upon the Russian 
people that they must see this thing through and 
must achieve success in their internal organisation. 
They must have discipline and organisation, not 



RUSSIA 105 

only in the armies at the front, but in all their trans- 
port services, in their factories, in all the activities 
of life far behind the lines. If they will to be free 
they must also will to organise and discipline them- 
selves, and in such a way conserve this great, price- 
less gift which Providence has now put into their 
hands. English people wish them the greatest suc- 
cess in their efforts. 

We have achieved now what otherwise would 
have been impossible — a union of all the free demo- 
cracies in the world. Now for the first time you 
have the great historical issue brought before you 
in the sharpest form. On the one hand you have 
the autocracies of Germany, Austria, and Turkey. 
What a combination! You might even add the 
Devil to that combination, and I think he is at 
present their strongest ally. On the other hand, 
you have the free nations of the world, who never 
dreamt of this business, who have been pounced 
upon, and who have fought to gain time in order 
that freedom may have the chance to organise itself 
in this great conflict. We have had that time. The 
war has lasted long enough for us to organise our- 
selves and prepare for this struggle. Now the free 
democracies of the world are in a position to move 
forward towards ending this war. Let nobody halt. 
America has come in, and Russia^ which has already 
borne such enormous burdens, will not faint by the 
way. I know she will bestir herself and exert her- 
self to the utmost, and in this way we shall have the 
union of free democratic Powers of the world 
arrayed against the three, if not the four, I have 
mentioned. I know victory is in sight. 



DEMOCRACY AND THE WAR 



General Smuts (an interview by Edward Marshall. 
The Curtis Brown News Bureau). 

June, 1917. 



DEMOCRACY AND THE WAR 

General Smuts was speaking very slowly as we sat at 
a great window looking out upon the mist-bound Thames. 
His calm-eyed face, thoughtful with that thoughtfulness 
which comes only to men who have lived much in the open, 
alone in wide spaces, was smiling confidently. We had 
been talking of America's entrance into the great war and 
he had reached the point where he was willing to estimate 
for mx its meaning. 

Here was a democrat of democrats, a man for the second 
time involved in a great struggle for ideals which in human 
life is wagered against human life with freedom as the 
ultimate stake. His first fight had been against England 
when he led the Boers in South Africa ; his second is with 
England, and in it he represents the reorganised, revivified, 
reconstituted South Africa, now fighting as a great dominion 
in the British Commonwealth of Nations, during the 
greatest of all wars. 

There is double the reason why the Central 
Powers must be defeated now that the States have 
entered. Victory now has come to mean a closer 
union of democracies, a union of democracies so 
close and of democracies so great and strong that 
the result can be nothing other than the disintegra- 
tion of the old order. The struggle of the Teutonic 
Powers is the last effort of old, feudal Europe to 
block human progress, and now all progressive 
humanity is arrayed in opposition to it. 



no WAR-TIME SPEECHES 

In America you ended the old order more than 
a century ago, and the French Revolution, which 
on this side was the beginning of its crumbling, 
could not have won without your example — could 
not have begun without your stimulus; but the 
French Revolution only gave to France a partial 
democracy. Britain through the evolution of her 
government only partly has achieved democracy. 

This war means that here in Europe will be 
fully realised the same achievement, which, already, 
you have carried to completion. It is especially 
fitting that you, in the United States, should take 
a hand in the last and greatest act leading to the 
downfall of the last of the old military autocracies. 
One — Russia — already has gone, under the tre- 
mendous pressure of this crisis. Turkey is break- 
ing up. Only the Austro-German combination, 
its two component parts identical in aims and 
methods, now remains. The combination must be 
broken, the solidity of each part must be cracked. 
And the cracking is already audible. The freemen 
of Europe are encouraged, are delighted, because 
America is helping in the effort to accomplish all 
of this. 

After this great task has been well done, real 
co-operation between free nations will be possible. 
Then for the first time will it be quite sane and 
reasonable to talk about the end of wars. Human- 
ity demands a League of Peace of some effective 
kind, but secrecy breeds irresponsibility. Irrespon- 
sibility in Government is dangerous. Germany for 
many years has been preparing for this war— and 
no one knew. Not public opinion but individual 



DEMOCRACY AND THE WAR in 

ambition ruled Germany, and Germany led Austria. 
Government by those who are not held account- 
able to the great mass can work in secret. A 
League of Peace must be impossible while this is 
true of a great Power. Not until this ceases may 
humanity feel certain that any of its treaties, 
solemnly attested though they be, may not be 
regarded as mere scraps of paper. 

This war is a great battle against feudalism, 
and that battle never could be won effectively were 
not the United States one of its participants. The 
business is the business of America quite as 
definitely as it is the business of the British Empire 
or of France, or Italy, or Belgium. It is the 
Armageddon of humanity's long struggle against 
feudalism. 

It would have been a world-disaster which 
would have harmed the future beyond estimate if 
America, the mainstay of the great new forces, had 
not come in. She fought this same fight for her- 
self; one of the privileges which she won with 
victory was the sublime right to unselfishness. It 
was she who welcomed the new France born with 
the Republic, and now she sets her seal upon what 
well may be the final fight for freedom among the 
nations of the world. How heartily we welcome 
her we hope she understands. 

Really this war is the direct offspring of your 
own war for independence. That gave birth, un- 
doubtedly, to the French Revolution, and that, in 
turn, brought true democracy to Europe. It gave 
Britain her democracy. As a matter of fact, the 
influence of that wonderful stirring of the souls 



ii2 WAR-TIME SPEECHES 

of men which made you free started this world 
business; it has had its vast effect even upon de- 
tails, for nothing other than your war of 1776 lies 
at the basis of the Russian overturn. 

Now, however, your influence will be far more 
than psychological. It will be important also in 
the military victory which is to come to the Allies; 
but if America is to help to victory the great new 
forces of which she is the exponent, she must take 
her proper place. 

If America had not come in there would have 
been the gravest danger that the great combat 
might lose its real perspective and true setting and 
degenerate into a mere Old World struggle, cer- 
tainly for liberty and for democracy, but sure to 
terminate in an Old World settlement. 

Now, with you in the actual fighting it will 
have a world-wide meaning and an epoch-making 
ending. 

For the first time the New World will come 
in * to redress the balance of the old.' Canning 
used that phrase with regard to the Monroe Doc- 
trine, when the autocrats of Europe wished to 
interfere with the independence of South America. 
One hundred years later, not too soon after he 
foretold it, it is coming true. 

The war must end in the triumph of demo- 
cracy, but that will not mean the universal demo- 
cratisation of the nations which will be affected. 
Humanity does not work so fast. The French 
Revolution required a century of time in which 
to find fruition, for its influence is evident in many 
very modern things. The unification of Italy is 



DEMOCRACY AND THE WAR 113 

one of them, the union of that Germany which has 
put its union to so bad a use is one of them. This 
war is a greater one, and its effects will be still 
more momentous. 

What they will be no man may venture to 
predict. Something will happen which will be 
greater than the Holy Roman Empire's and 
mediaeval Europe's cracking up. It will bring 
humanity together. It will mean a step toward 
the co-ordination of free nations, and that will 
mean the further spread of freedom beyond the 
boundaries even of nations which at present live 
in liberty. 

International co-operation will be substituted 
to a new extent for that international competition 
which has brought all wars, including this one. 
Already has been born a concert of military and 
diplomatic action among the Allies, indicated by 
continual conferences in the common cause, which 
are tending to impress, alike upon the peoples and 
their leaders, that internationally as well as in the 
case of individuals group-thought is better than 
one-man- or one-nation-thought. 

The world is beginning to piece a new machine 
together for its future governance. In England, 
France, and Italy this is plain enough; in Russia, 
of course, the signs are so unmistakable as to be 
epoch-making. 

Autonomy has not been interfered with. Each 
State retains its sovereignty. But each tremendous 
individual machine works smoothly in close har- 
mony with all the others toward a common end. 
And now into this co-operation the greatest of the 

1 



1 1 4 WAR-TIME SPEECHES 

world's Republics has advanced! A century ago 
all this would have been impossible. 

This fine, significant, and fruitful co-operation 
will not cease with the cessation of the war. Free 
democracies throughout the world will be in close 
touch with other free democracies. The absolute 
governments must go. In that will lie a guarantee 
of peace — the first the world has known. In other 
words, this war will be a peace-maker, although it 
may seem like an effort of far vision to predict that 
now. 

Of course, this could not be if Democracy 
should be defeated. If Germany should win all 
would be lost for generations. The great task 
would be left for toilsome and laborious re- 
doing. 

Centuries ago there was a time when here in 
Europe there was far more unity than since has 
been the case. That was in the days of Papal 
Primacy and that Holy Roman Empire which 
finally broke up. France was the worst sinner 
against this measurably good condition. Her 
policy of conquest finally became incarnated in 
Napoleon and his dream of empire. 

It was that dream of the great, magnificent, 
disastrous Frenchman which is principally respon- 
sible for the grim fact that coincident with the 
growth of Democracy's fine vision has been a 
growth of military monarchy. The Kaiser's sinister 
career has been modelled on Napoleon's. It has 
not been a modern dream, and so must fade. It 
has intensely lacked reality. 

Like two thunderclouds approaching one 
another these influences, that of the Kaiser, with 



DEMOCRACY AND THE WAR 115 

his mad reversion to the days of medievalism, and 
Democracy, with its prophecies of freedom for the 
future of mankind, have been in opposition, and 
Democracy must win. 

The world required the shock to wake it up. 
England herself was slipping from the track. 
Under Disraeli she thought that she must be a 
military nation bent upon Imperialism. She went 
in for it, and the trial came finally in South Africa. 
The British victory over the Boers was a great test. 
A cheap and easy victory would have strengthened 
what were then the strong imperial tendencies of 
England and the British. But that tremendously 
exhausting struggle, maintained by one of the 
world's smallest peoples, taught the British people 
that the Boers were fighting, in some measure, for 
Britain's own traditional ideals. That meant that 
when the British won military victory so great a 
change was found to have been brought about in 
their moral that not only the two small Republics, 
but that which needed to be conquered in England, 
all three had met defeat. 

I believe that the Boer War, too, like your 
American and the French Revolutions, had an 
immense influence upon history; that it is to some 
extent that influence which the world now is 
feeling in the wonderful co-operation between free 
peoples to which I have referred. The Boer War 
forced anew upon the British people the realisation 
of those fine ideals for which at bottom they in- 
variably feel sympathy. 

And so the ending of the present mighty war 
in a triumph for the Allies will not and must not 
mean merely a military victory. All real victories 

1 2 



116 WAR-TIME SPEECHES 

are more than military victories. It will and must 
result in the establishment of the moral, free choice 
of peoples and nations with regard to their own 
fate. Thus only can the infinite struggle produce 
an effect sufficiently beneficial to the future to 
justify its mighty cost in any sense. 

This war is not directed by the Allies against 
the German people. Military imperialism is the 
foe the Allies fight, and within another ten years, 
had the war not come, Freedom, which never 
properly has been organised, would have fallen 
prey to her great enemies. In such a space, short 
though it seems to be, Germany well might have 
grown so powerful that she could have put 
humanity in bondage for another century. 

Democracy was not prepared for war, auto- 
cracy was ready; but Democracy fought bitterly 
for time and won it. Give Democracy that one 
thing, time, and always it will win. Always time 
will put upon the side of true Democracy the vast 
battalions of the imponderables, of the unmaterial 
but powerful forces, spiritual, mental, psycho- 
logical. 

To me the most impressive thing about this 
war is not its slaughter of the guilty or the inno- 
cent, is not its cost in property destroyed and 
money spent with maddened lavishness upon the 
instruments of death. It is the fact that it has 
linked together for combat the forces of Demo- 
cracy, the fact that through it liberty at last is 
organised. 

The forces of Democracy never have been 
organised before, and their coherent jointure has 



DEMOCRACY AND THE WAR 117 

been a mighty task. Two years were needed to 
induce America, the greatest of free peoples, to 
step into the battle-ranks, and the work of break- 
ing down what of the old and wrong was left in 
Britain and other democratic countries is not yet 
entirely accomplished. The thing is epoch-making. 
We cannot at this time conceive the vast import- 
ance of these great events. Mankind a century 
hence will only start to learn the whats and whys 
of it all. 

Without the entrance of America the great 
thing could not have been done; and the necessity 
for her co-operation was less material than psycho- 
logical. It is that which makes the fact that she 
has joined the fighting-line so wonderfully, so 
epochally fine. 

7" asked the great South African if he had an especial 
message for America. 

A most important one. It is : Press on ! 
Do not delay. Be energetic, keen, and wise. 
There is intense need for hurry. Much time 
has been required by Congress to break away 
from its traditions; you have not been too early; 
but we hope that now the start is made the move- 
ment will be rapid. And we have faith that it will 
be. We know America. 

In the last stages of the war America must 
stand as the great protagonist for liberty. I hope 
that she will bend all her vast energies toward quick 
participation in the fight, serving not merely as a 
recruiting ground for us, but developing as, per- 
haps, the greatest warrior of us all for liberty. 



n8 WAR-TIME SPEECHES 

You are fresh. Yours is the land of individual 
initiative. Your separate citizens can realise, per- 
haps better than the single citizens of Europe, the 
magnitude of the great causes which are jeopardised. 
You really have fought for all these causes in your 
own two great wars. 

You have youth and you have vigour. Your 
people have been educated, and what a stroke for 
education it will be when by their fighting they 
shall demonstrate to all the world that the best 
fighting man as well as the best working man is he 
who has been educated ! Germany but half under- 
stood the secret of the best creation of real citizen- 
ship through education. Because of your fine 
educational systems, and their preservation of the 
individual, I am sure that when your men come 
over we shall find them the best soldiers in the 
world. Being educated, they will know the vast 
importance of the cause for which we fight. And 
there will be among them no mere automatons. 
Their knowledge and adaptability, I am sure, will 
make them the finest soldiers that the world has 
seen. 

The fact that this is really a war for peace 
will give it an immense appeal among your people. 
The results, I am quite confident, will make the 
Allies glad and Germany regret that America has 
been a pacifist nation. This war is not a struggle 
for military dominion. I am sure that tens of 
thousands of your German-blooded citizens will 
feel it to be really a fight against exactly that and 
see that, being such a fight against it, it actually is 
a battle for the soul of Germany. I am sure that 



DEMOCRACY AND THE WAR 119 

there are those among them who will wish to fight 
with us because of their conviction that, as true 
German patriots, they must help their nation 
toward real freedom and democracy. Actually to 
fight for the Allies is to fight for what is best in 
Germany herself. 

The American of German descent can par- 
ticipate in the great struggle with as good a heart 
as any other American. He will be fighting for 
his Motherland as well as for the land of his 
adoption. Many Germans know that; I have 
reason to be sure of it. Being pulled in one direc- 
tion by their ties of blood and in the other by 
their ties of human interest and true values, and 
having been educated in the identity of freedom 
by residence in a free country, I feel confident that 
most of them will realise that this really is not a 
fight against Germany, but a struggle to pull 
her into line with the progressive forces of the 
world. 

Personally I have not the slightest feeling 
against Germans. I am positive that the victory 
of the Allies will redound as much to their advan- 
tage as to that of anybody. In the heart of the 
Allied soldiers or in the plans of the Allied Govern- 
ments there is no wish to crush Germany as a 
State or even to minimise her importance. The 
Allies but insist — and this they do insist — that she 
must cease to terrorise the world. 

For years her mistaken policies have kept the 
peoples of the earth in apprehension of exactly 
that which now is happening, and this humanity 
no longer will endure. She has been inoculating 



i20 WAR-TIME SPEECHES 

the whole world with the virus of militarism, and 
this has tended to dislocate progress. 

Germany always will remain among the most 
potent of the nations. She has been so highly 
organised that always she will be in the van of 
progress. It would be the world's loss if she were 
permanently expelled from that high position; it 
was the world's loss when she abandoned it for 
retrogression. All Germans but the Prussians have 
been a peaceful people always. But either from 
Frederick the Great or from Napoleon the Prus- 
sians learnt a devilish lesson, and belief in what 
was thus established in their minds must be 
knocked out of them. 

Especially to the young American there is 
much worth study in the situation as it stands. 
Let me speak particularly to him. 

What are you? You have been born into a 
system of liberal individualism. You are for- 
tunate. Here in Europe children are brought up 
in an old system. You are a free man, an indi- 
vidual co-equal with all other citizens. 

You are not an atom in a stratification. That 
is the chief advantage of your citizenship of the 
United States. Not being stratified you have all 
of life to move about in. 

It may be difficult, because of this very strength 
of your individualism, to lick you into shape as a 
great fighting force, an army; but when this once 
is done you will be wonderfully powerful. When 
you come over here to fight numbers of things will 
chafe you, but you will learn much quicker than 
the European soldier can learn. 



DEMOCRACY AND THE WAR 121 

We in South Africa are intensely individual, 
fed upon the milk of social and political freedom, 
and I do not hesitate to say that because of that 
very fact South Africans are now among the best 
of the world's soldiers. There are no soldiers like 
freemen, and you, the young men of America 
whose high destiny it will be to battle in this war, 
will be among the best of the world's best. You, 
representing democracy, will beat Germany, repre- 
senting autocracy, at everything she undertakes. 

One lesson I have derived from a study of 
American history and problems is the danger 
America has incurred on various critical occasions 
through the failure of her statesmen and public 
men sufficiently to support her military authorities. 
For example, it is clear that in your War of Inde- 
pendence Congress went as near as possible to 
bringing general disaster, and that had it not been 
for the invincible spirit of George Washington, 
with whom Congress for ever was interfering to the 
upset of his well-laid plans, your struggle would 
have failed. 

In your Civil War much that might have been 
done at once and effectively was postponed because 
your Congress would not trust your leaders. Only 
when Lincoln was able to give a free hand to Grant 
was victory achieved. This did not occur till scores 
of thousands had been slaughtered needlessly. 
The deaths of those brave thousands may be 
charged directly to political interference with the 
military plans of your accepted but not sufficiently 
powerful leaders. 

Now, as you approach participation in this 



i22 WAR-TIME SPEECHES 

struggle, take thought of these things. Your 
people do not realise the magnitude of this 
enormous task. It may mean for you a far greater 
struggle than your Civil War. It may well be 
the greatest effort of your history. It is of the 
utmost and far-reaching importance that you 
should take thought of the great lessons taught by 
the experience of your Lincoln and your Grant. 

You should very carefully, very solemnly, 
arrange the best military machine which you can 
possibly devise. You should organise it and equip 
it with the best thought of your national genius. 
Once built, this great machine should be placed in 
charge of men so shrewdly chosen that to them 
you can feel safe in giving an absolutely free hand. 
Do not let your Government pull this way and 
your Congress pull the other while your military 
commanders strain in a third direction. Take to 
heart the mighty lessons of your own and every 
other nation's history. 

The relations between your civil authorities 
should be such that, having settled your military 
direction, they will let it work with the least possible 
interference, for the least friction means the greatest 
efficiency. 

The salvation of Britain was that at the time 
of the war's outbreak she had as her War Minister 
Lord Kitchener and left him a free hand in the 
organisation of her armies — her armies that will 
win their victory after his death. In America you 
have no military genius in your Cabinet, nor is it 
necessary that you should have, but this makes it 
still more essential that after you have constituted 



DEMOCRACY AND THE WAR 123 

your military machine as carefully as possible all 
political conditions should be subordinated in its 
operation, and that that should go forward without 
outside interference. 

Political interference in military affairs already 
has caused great difficulties on this side. Avoid 
them. Study our mistakes. Remember those of 
your own wars. Avoid them now. 

May I venture to express my pleasure over 
some things which have reached us from America 
as frankly as I have expressed my fears ? The stand 
which a number of your great organisations have 
taken against profiteering is most gratifying to us 
here. Nothing could be more important. You 
have set a notable example in this matter to us all — 
and you have done it very quickly. It looks as 
if such scandals as have marked the progress of the 
war on this side may be avoided in America. 

This has been among the valuable indications 
that in entering this war America is doing so with 
the spirit that it is a holy war, waged in the justest 
causes for the highest, noblest principles, and that 
anyone who tries to profit through it must be held 
for evermore as having passed beyond the pale. 
Here, in this matter, is another opportunity for the 
United States to set a record for the world to 
marvel at and follow — if it can. Personally I have 
no doubt that you will do it. 

And before you go may I give you one more 
message ? I should wish to direct this definitely to 
American women. Very keenly must they feel the 
reasons for and justifications of this struggle, if 
they would support it, for theirs will be the greatest 



i24 WAR-TIME SPEECHES 

sacrifice, that of their sweethearts, husbands, sons, 
and brothers, and, secondarily, often of that com- 
fort which to women means so much. 

They should realise that one of the great truths 
about this struggle is that it is for the position 
which all womanhood will hold throughout the 
world in days to come. This is a war for peace, 
and through the lack of peace the sufferings of 
women have been greater than the sufferings of 
men. It must be, and they must help to make it, 
the last chapter in the old book of war and horror, 
destruction of dear homes, rapes, massacre and 
outrage. They must help to make it the great end 
of the oppressions of all womanhood. In Europe, 
speaking generally, women still are held in thrall 
by the old feudal system, and by helping in this 
war with all their strength and all their hearts and 
all their souls American women may do much to 
help to break those chains. 

If Freedom wins in this war, political emancipa- 
tion will be achieved by womanhood in all parts of 
the world. 

It is the fight of womanhood as much as it is 
that of manhood. It has liberated many evil forces; 
it will liberate many forces of beneficence. Chiefest 
of them all will be the sane and purifying force of 
womanhood. Unquestionably the Allied nations 
represent the impulse working toward the freedom 
of all womanhood. The feudal impulse is to keep 
womanhood in subjugation, in the background. 

There is every reason in the world why women 
in America should strive to help, strive mightily, 
even were they not involved through love of 



DEMOCRACY AND THE WAR 125 

fathers, sons, and husbands who must join the 
battle-line, and by the love of their own country 
whose best traditions and institutions would be 
threatened by a German victory. 

Now let me say one word to the young 
American who has not enlisted but is eligible for 
service. You are living in the greatest time of 
human history. You are confronted by the greatest 
opportunity God ever gave to any human individual 
to help his fellow-men, to help poor, staggering 
humanity to a new and brighter future. If you do 
not do your duty now your conscience all your life 
will trouble you. If you do not do your duty now 
you never will be able to hold up your head among 
your fellow freemen in the days to come. To the 
working men among you this must especially 
appeal, for to the working men this war, the 
winning of this war, means a new world, better 
conditions, a higher order. 

The working man who fights in this cause is 
fighting for all those ideals which the labour move- 
ment in all parts of the world, in Germany as much 
as elsewhere, has stood for since the days of its 
beginning. 

Up to date the young workers of the Old World 
have borne nobly their part in the great struggle. 
The young American workers who now are called 
upon to help the fight may not all have the privilege 
of joining in the marching ranks. Indeed they 
must not all join them. The worker at his bench 
may be as useful as the soldier in his trench. 

Especially will this be true of workers in your 
shipyards. Everything in the great war now de- 



i 2 6 WAR-TIME SPEECHES 

pends upon communication and transport. In the 
face of the enormous destruction of shipping which 
already has occurred and is continuing, and the 
world-wide range of this war, it is impossible to 
do our best unless shipbuilding progress is 
accelerated, and there the worker of America be- 
comes of vital world-importance. 

And if the shipbuilder is a great power in this 
vast war the farmer is as great a one. When the 
ships are launched there must be food with which 
to fill their holds so that the people on this side 
who so far have been forced to bear the brunt of 
fighting may continue at their task. To build 
ships and raise potatoes, corn, and wheat — there 
is a truly patriotic programme for the young and 
old American worker, commonplace as it may 
sound. It is as patriotic to till fields in these days 
as it is to carry rifles. 

When, some day, it is all over, every free 
citizen of the United States should have the proud 
consciousness that he has done his share in one way 
or another in the great task of making victory for 
Right a certainty, that he has done his share toward 
safeguarding the most priceless of all humanity's 
good gifts, the high ideals of individuality, liberty, 
and free government. 

Fighting side by side in the same cause we 
shall forget imaginary boundary lines. As the 
result of our joint struggle there shall grow in us 
a new consciousness, a world-wide sympathy, a co- 
operative spirit out of which a better world will 
come to being. Towards the certainty of this new 
order and the surety of this new world, no one is 



DEMOCRACY AND THE WAR 127 

in a position to do more than the United States, 
blessed as your nation is by unexampled resources 
and strong after a century of freedom and half a 
century of peace. Now is the time when we feel 
sure that these immeasurably noble gifts will be 
turned to account in order that throughout the 
world may be achieved the American ideal of the 
freedom of the individual. 

Your minute-men of 1776 fought in no nobler 
cause than that in which will fight your minute- 
men of 191 7. Nothing more clearly expressed the 
reasons of the struggle or has done more to make 
ail Europe understand them than the great speech 
of your President, Woodrow Wilson, to the 
League to Enforce Peace, and his still greater mes- 
sage to your Congress before your declaration of 
war. Millions in Europe whose faith was on the 
wane were heartened by his words and I feel sure 
that the American people, who have been nurtured 
on the milk of human freedom, will appreciate even 
more profoundly than Europeans can the greatness 
of the issues and how necessary it is that freemen 
everywhere should contribute to the battle, if the 
sacrifice is necessary, all that they possess. 

We are heartened, too, by our certainty that 
your President stands not alone among you as the 
champion of liberty. All your great leaders share 
his views on the great questions of this war. You 
have proved this through your generations from 
your days of Washington down to and through the 
days of your present President's great predecessor, 
Theodore Roosevelt. 



PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY R. CLAY AND SONS, LTD., 
BRUNSWICK STREET, STAMFORD STREET, S.E. I, AND BUNGAY, SUFFOLK. 



BRITAIN 
AND THE WAR 



ANDRE CHEVRILLON 

With a Preface by 

RUDYARD KIPLING 



" Monsieur Ghevrillon's analysis of the 
national mind — especially the chapters an 
' The Appeal to Conacicnce ' — is nearer the 
root of the matter than anything that has 
yet been written hy any Englishman." — 
From Ritdvard Kipling s Preface. 



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